


Mountains and Space

by brieflybe



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, Atheism, Depression, Divorce, Drama & Romance, Existential Crisis, Father-Son Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, Jewish Identity, M/M, Non-Explicit Sexual Content, Period-Typical Homophobia, agnosticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:37:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12150792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brieflybe/pseuds/brieflybe
Summary: "He's thinking of that smile that Whizzer has, the one he uses to shake Marvin's existence off him, he's thinking of Whizzer, fucking some strange man in a strange place, bringing that man home, stumbling right over Marvin's tired form, not bothering to even look. Whizzer had always refused to take responsibility for Marvin's homosexuality, and though Marvin can see the logic behind that, he can't help but claim that Whizzer is somewhat responsible, at least. There are triggers, and there is fire. Marvin did not have to meet Whizzer. He did not have to implode."Marvin divorced his wife, left his child and ran off with a friend. Pretty much everyone is offended.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Thise is actually a one-shot that got out of hand, and will now be posted in parts, because it's over 20k and that's insane to post in one go. How did that even happen. Right, anyway, first part is a short one! Hope you like it!

Marvin spends the morning after leaving his wife waiting – no, banging on Whizzer Brown's door, leaning against it, walking in circles next to it, to no avail. He's thinking of waiting, right there. He's thinking of Whizzer, arriving home, seeing him standing here. Of telling Whizzer what he's done. Of Whizzer's pleased smile which always seems like a smirk, like you played right into his plan. Whizzer will grab Marvin by the collar and say: "Well, since you have nowhere else to be, how about I take my time?" and Marvin will forget that he left his wife and child to screw a guy that isn't even home when Marvin is homeless.

He wants to stay, but might be better off leaving. He's thinking of that smile that Whizzer has, the one he uses to shake Marvin's existence off him, he's thinking of Whizzer, fucking some strange man in a strange place, bringing that man home, stumbling right over Marvin's tired form, not bothering to even look. Whizzer had always refused to take responsibility for Marvin's homosexuality, and though Marvin can see the logic behind that, he can't help but claim that Whizzer is somewhat responsible, at least. There are triggers, and there is fire. Marvin did not have to meet Whizzer. He did not have to implode.     

Imagine: You, post a sleepless night, asking your wife for divorce over breakfast. Imagine, your friend, telling you: _you did not leave your wife for me, you left her for your big gay honest future_. Imagine: banging your head against the door, because what a fucking asshole, what a prick, why can't he just say thank you and smile –

He's on his feet and about to leave when he almost runs into Whizzer, sweaty, heaving Whizzer, dressed in running gear, looking as if he covered half of New York on his track. There is no guy, behind him, next to him, beneath him. Just Whizzer. Who seems worn out. Who seems unimpressed.

"Well, this is sort of pathetic," he tells Marvin, voice clipped, even though he's still breathing heavily, "I'm not sure if it ever worked on your wife, dear, but I find that most of what woman think is sweet is just plain sad."

Marvin shrugs. "I was just about to leave."

Whizzer scoffs. "So leave. And let me through to my apartment, yeah?"

Marvin rubs at his eyes. He thinks that one time, at some point, he had control over this conversation, over _a_ conversation. In his head, maybe. "I left my wife," he says, quickly, in a rush. He's thinking of waking up, and not smelling Trina's flowery perfume, he's thinking of waking up without hearing her breathing, too heavy, as if she's made sighing as a form of existence. He's thinking of waking up without running into her hands or her hair or her feet. Of her not saying, "Sleep well?" even though neither of them ever does, even though he doesn't want to talk, even though she hates him. When he speaks next, it's through an almost overwhelming sense of relief. "'m all yours." There's a smile twisting his features. There's the scattering of the world he wrecked around him. He's been sitting on the floor, covered in dust.

Whizzer's face is unreadable. Whizzer had not been waiting, that he knows of. Whizzer had not been pining, that he can remember. But Marvin knows he'll be pleased. Marvin knows what Whizzer thinks of her. He knows what Whizzer thinks of him. He knows.

"Well, shit." Whizzer says, eloquently, and Marvin would run the length of the world and back to leave Whizzer speechless, leaving Trina was nothing, really. He'd do it again.

"Can I come in?"

The question seems to shake Whizzer out of his haze, with a last lingering look at Marvin, up and down, not admiring but examining, predicting the weather, predicting the future, looking for any reason to call bullshit. Marvin is a queer, unmovable statue. Marvin had left his wife. Marvin had taken on a journey. Marvin had left his home burning and run the fuck away.  Look back, and you turn into a pillar of salt. Look back, and you must explain yourself to your kid. He'd rather look at Whizzer.

"So what caused this exciting new development?" Whizzer asks, voice somewhat shaky. He walks right past Marvin, produces the key out of his short's pocket, and proceeds with the long, excruciating process of opening his horrible, horrible door. "Did she overcook the chicken?"

"She never does that," Marvin replies evenly. "That was you." Whizzer finally manages to unlock the door, and walks swiftly inside, not waiting for Marvin to follow, but not closing it behind him, either. Marvin does follow him, and Marvin does closes it behind him. He leans against the wall, because it's safer than sitting on the couch. He could say any number of things, at this instance. For example, _I left my family because I'm gay so can I maybe get a hug_ , or, _outside of your apartment everyone hates me, and I'm not sure that you even like me that much_ , _so can I maybe get a hug_. But that is not how the game is played, and none of them was a big hugger to begin with.

Whizzer snorts. "Creative differences, then?" He does sit on the couch. His old, creaking, probably bed-bug ridden couch. Because he's insane, and he has no standards, and he's turning Marvin's divorce into a joke.

"Go fuck yourself, Whizzer. She's a woman and I'm queer and I've been fucking you for months now, you prick." Marvin's marriage might have been a joke, but divorces never are. Kids never are.

Whizzer's eyebrows go up to his hairline, his smile, stretched from ear to ear now, borderline maniac. He tilts his head to the side, a 'come hither' look, except he means it ironically, somehow. Eventually, he gets up when Marvin doesn't, steps right up to him, crowds him against the wall. "Language."  He grins. "I'd ask if you kiss your wife with that mouth, but…"

"I left my wife for you."

Whizzer swallows. Marvin watches his throat move. "So what, you want a gold star? A medal?" There is no venom in it. Marvin thinks that if Whizzer had a medal to give, he might have gotten it, just so that Marvin would look the other way. Marvin doesn't.

"Well, right now I want you."

Whizzer raises an eyebrow. "Not a prize, darling."

Marvin snorts. "Don't I know it."

Whizzer's smile is sweet in that special way of his – like, it tastes sweet, but can't be considered sugar, and he places his palm on Marvin's shoulder, fingers running up and down Marvin's pulse point. He uses his other hand to capture Marvin's left one, playing idly with Marvin's fingers. "That's an awfully important ring for someone who's not married." He states, tracing Marvin's ring finger with his thumb.

Marvin blinks, not sure how to explain that after Eleven years of marriage, your wedding ring is simply a feature. It's like a birth stain, or a scar, or a mole. You can probably surgically remove it, but otherwise… it's just there. Whizzer, on his part, and in clear opposition to Trina or to everything that's good for him, has very little interest in any explanation Marvin has to offer.

When Whizzer squats down, leaning on one bended knee, all the while not letting go of Marvin's hand, Marvin's heart just sort of stops, without any apparent reason, just stops. Marvin would die right there, in Whizzer Brown's apartment, for nothing at all, doing nothing at all, having nothing at all.

"It's worth money," he answers, weakly. It's not as if he was going to sell it. Whizzer spins the ring around Marvin's finger. It halts, it creaks, it pulls at Marvin's skin on the way up.

Whizzer's smile is wicked. There are stars in his eyes. "Marv," he says, "You should know," he takes Marvin's hand between both of his own, and pulls the ring off Marvin's finger. It's struggle, but Marvin doesn't fight him on this, so he's in hold of it, right then, a plain band of white gold, "That I am very skilled at throwing money away." Whizzer has a pitcher's throw, and the ring is gone, right then, somewhere on the floor, somewhere under the table, somewhere under the bed, leaving Marvin leaning against his apartment wall with his shaky breathing and a pale tan line where a ring is ought to be.

"That's it," he announces, his voice rising. "I now pronounce you Queer." He tilts his face upwards, looking at Marvin with his pretty, pretty eyes, smiling at Marvin with his pretty, pretty mouth, and Marvin feels naked. Whizzer's fingers move to play with Marvin's zipper, face pressed against Marvin's hip, and Marvin feels alone.

"So how about you fuck me already?" he suggests, because they did not gather here today for nothing. He thinks, briefly, about Whizzer, sucking a bruise onto Marvin's neck somewhere near the coffee table at his house, at his leaving room, where he left Trina at. Marvin's wife walking in. A wine glass breaking. I now pronounce you – fucked. Pretty much just fucked. "C'mon," he pleads. "Right here."

Whizzer his laughing against him, arms wrapped around Marvin's thighs and laughing, shoulders shaking, breath shaking. "I have a bed, you know."

Marvin grins. "Your bed is shit."

Whizzer lets go of him, looks up so that Marvin could see him rolling his eyes. "Well, your life is shit, Mr. Divorcee plus one."

Marvin looks at him, _looks at him_ , at his stupidly great hair and his stupidly beautiful smirk and his stupidly beautiful everything, and how could he ever settle for women – for Trina – for – how could he ever settle for less. He tangles his fingers in Whizzer's hair, briefly, on a whim, and tugs slightly, watching as Whizzer's mouth falls open, and Marvin had never wanted anything this much, and not in a way that's petty. He'd never wanted something for any reason except because he deserves it, because he was a man and that was his right. He'd never Just wanted, regardless of whether he can have it or not. Regardless of whether he's wanted back.

Marvin releases him, takes a step backwards, until he's plastered to the wall, then bends the knee, kneel in front of him, placing his palm on both sides of Whizzer face and laughing breathlessly when Whizzer surges in to kiss him.

He allows Whizzer to push him sideways, backwards, until he feels his shoulders hits the flat surface, pinning him to cold tiles with nails and elbows and teeth, nailing him to the floor, kissing across Marvin's jaw, biting Marvin's lower lip. Later, after they'd actually moved to Whizzer's bed, Whizzer would trace his fingers across Marvin's chest and ask: "So what, did she, like, cry?" because Marvin to Whizzer was a cautionary tale, and he could not help but poke around, looking for wounds, looking for bodies.

Right now, however, Whizzer leans close to whisper in Marvin's ear: "You look hot when you're single." He smells like sweat, and that colon that Marvin had bought him when he returned from a trip abroad, the one Whizzer complained smelled like overcompensation and hyper-masculinity. Marvin breaths him in and thinks of a life without Trina's voice. He's body, wired like a machine, perfectly aligned to walk carefully and without missteps on the creaking, rotten floor of their relationship, allowed to just exist, moving a few evolutionary steps forward, moving through time. Free.

Whizzer opens the buttons of Marvin's shirt with nimble fingers, kissing along his chest, across his hipbones, moving closer, moving away. Whizzer pulls at his trousers, and his underwear, and Marvin's hips buck forward while Marvin's head hits the floor. "Stay the night, Marv." He whispers, right before he stops talking altogether, and Marvin's eyes shut, Marvin's hands spasms, Marvin's brain blinks in and out of life, Marvin's palms entangle themselves in Whizzer's hair, and Marvin is nothing at that moment, he's not a person, he's rootless, he cannot recall his own name. Whizzer pulls back, and Marvin pulls at his hair, and Whizzer makes that noise, and Whizzer does that thing with his mouth, and Whizzer says: "Behave." Marvin's heart stutters, then stops. Marvin obeys. Marvin will do anything. Marvin's going down.   


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He sighs. He runs a hand through his hair. He dials a different number. He's answered on the third ring.
> 
> "This is Mendel Weisenbachfeld."
> 
> "I left my wife," he announces as a way of greeting.
> 
> A pause. "Mark? Is that you?"

So they fucked for three days, and on the fourth day, they rested. Marvin, that is. Whizzer was gone, somewhere. Maybe during the night. Maybe early morning. The sheets were cold, and so was the note Whizzer had left him, and so was the breakfast Marvin had eaten. There is an insistent buzzing in his head, like the remnants of a hung over, like the voice of his son, screaming at Trina in the middle of the mall. It won't stop. He'd throw something if he could – a glass, a lamp, a fit, but as Marvin's son is currently discovering, tantrums are only worth it if you have an audience – a mother, a wife.

There is a purple bruise right beneath Marvin's collar bone. Whizzer used to be careful with leaving those, right up until he just didn't give a fuck. Marvin's wife, Whizzer had figure, was an annoyance of his, Marvin's marriage – a problem of his.  He was not an invader, he was the story, he was the point. And Marvin, who had always operated on a system of punishment and rewards, carrots and sticks, had heard him. Except maybe he had heard wrong. Would he return, if Whizzer doesn't want him? Probably not, though he probably could.       

Except that here he is, alone, stuck in Whizzer's matchbox of an apartment, this musty, dirty, tiny space where there are probably rats and there are probably spiders, in a building where people don't have health insurance or families and like them or visitors, and so one day they just die. They go to sleep alone, and they die alone. Here is the is the cautionary tale. Here is the embodiment of everything Marvin had decided not to become as he married a woman. Whizzers do not have extended families, they do not have core families.  They don't have proper jobs. They do not own a house. People do not respect them – people will never respect them. Whizzer is a walking talking scandal, and, well, maybe now Marvin is, too. But Marvin has a son. He had a wife. He has a job. He owns a house. He was not stupid, even as he head-dived right out of the respectable segment of society. He didn't lose anything.

Except that here he is, alone, in a rat cave, in Giovanni's Room, where there is barely any heat and barely any air, and all he can think is: _My son can never come here._

So he get dressed, for the first time in three days, and he leaves the house, for the first time in three days, and he buys the paper, because the outside world matters to him, still. He's taken a week off work due to trauma of divorce, due to him not giving a fuck, and how he'd never taken a day off, ever, in over a decade. Whizzer had said: "People would assume you're at home, screwing your mistress." But that was fine, wasn't it? Marvin was a man. Men had an agreed upon right to stay home and screw their mistress. It's not the act of cheating that's the matter.

There's a buzzing in his head, it returns as soon as his back in Whizzer's apartment. It's Jason, refusing to sleep right up until Marvin is called to the battle field. Jason, refusing a bath right up until Marvin tells him to go, Jason, sick, distressed, in pain, refusing any contact with Marvin at all. He shouldn't use Whizzer's phone, isn't sure if Whizzer is even able to pay for the phone bill he's actually responsible for, but Marvin can just offer to cover for that at the end of the month, can't he? He dials. Nobody answers, which, might as well. He's slightly scared of his son. He has nothing to say to his wife.

She doesn't see it, is the problem. Marvin did not leave because he's queer. Marvin left because he's queer, and actively in love with a man, and actively not in love with her, awfully disinterested, drained from any will power he had to sleep next to her, to touch her, to hear her voice first thing in the morning. Marvin is attracted to men, in general, not attracted to any woman, as a rule, but he is running specifically, to Whizzer. He is running, specifically, away from her. Thinking of home, there is something crawling under his skin.

He sighs. He runs a hand through his hair. He dials a different number. He's answered on the third ring.

"This is Mendel Weisenbachfeld."

"I left my wife," he announces as a way of greeting.

A pause. "Mark? Is that you?"

Marvin scoffs.

"Right! Not Mark. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that, uh… Gideon, of course I know your voice. but it was a long time coming, surely you –"

"Gideon and Lea are getting a divorce?" Marvin spits. Well, that's one reason to smile today.

He hears a cough. "Marvin? That's… ah." It makes no sense, how much Mendel is annoying to him, at that specific moment in time. How useless he seems. Worst then Marvin, who is queer and still married to a woman who he doesn't want to touch anymore, ever, who is a father to a kid which he left all alone, who he was supposed to take to soccer practice today, come to think of it.

"Unexpected?" suggest Marvin.

Mendel laughs, short and low. "Overdue, is what I would have said. But – well. That is a development." He breathes, loud and obnoxious, right into the speaker. "I happen to have an opening today. How would you like to come in for a session?"

Marvin looks around – at the empty apartment, at Whizzer's coat, hanging loosely near the door, at the pathetic, tiny, kitchen that is more of a health hazard than anything else. "Give me Forty minutes."

"Take Fifty," Mendel replies.

"No," Marvin answers. He hangs up, and with a last, hateful look around, picks Whizzer's spare key of the night table and gets the fuck out.

*

The story of how Marvin came to see a psychiatrist on a weekly basis goes as most events that came to pass in Marvin's life, up until the age of Twelve, went: his mother told him to.

They have been talking about the weather. His parents moved to Florida three years prior, motivated by the ever-increasing need to pretend father's health was a living thing, a thing that could be improved, instead of preserved, stuffed and displayed upon the mantel for guests to gawk at. Marvin had taken the move as the grand opportunity it was, and ceased pretending his parents are a living thing, a thing that exists in his life, a thing that could leave a dent. Disappointment from old, decaying parents is not strong enough to carry all the way from Florida, you see, and what Marvin's mother doesn't know won't hurt him.  

It goes as follows:

Marvin's mom opens: "Do you remember that boy, what was his name – Ora's boy, you know, the one with the beard –"

And Marvin's mom continues: "Oh, you must remember Ora, she's Rebecca's sister, you know Rebecca – Jacob's wife –"

And Marvin says: "Wasn't she Jacob's mother?" Marvin's mother ignores him.

"Well, anyway, Ora's son – oh, Mendel! Mendel Weisenbachfeld, why did you not tell me that was his name – had just opened his own private Clinique quite near you, he works as a psychiatrist."

And Marvin thinks, 'There is a bar in Christopher street where no one will recognize me, if I hurry I could tell Trina I'm at work, pulling an all-nighter'.

And his mother says: "That's quite impressive, you know. You have to become an actual Doctor first, I'm told, not like those crooks that attend a college degree about having nice, happy feelings –"

And Marvin thinks, 'there was a man the last time, with pretty, soft, shiny hair and pretty, soft, shiny lips that disappeared before Marvin could say a word to him, maybe he'll be there again – '

And Marvin's mother says: "So I think it could be good for you."

 And Marvin thinks: 'I would literally give anything to be at that bar, at this moment, talking to a beautiful man, not talking to my mother,' and Marvin says: "What?"

"Scheduling a meeting with him. Ora tells me he truly knows how to fix people." There's a part in him the skips a bit, the part who is currently hitting at some handsome man in some dive in a lousy part of town. There are all sorts of therapy for people like Marvin. There are Rabbis and Doctors and Electricity and cutting his brain to pieces like it was bread, there is pain and shame and none of it helps. Shame is not a moving force, marriage is not a moving force. It's a status-quo. It's how you stop, in fear that moving will make people notice.     

"So I need fixing now?"

"Oh, Marv, of course you do. Can't you see that? All grown up and still so…" She takes a deep breath. "It's like you're still Fourteen-year-old sometimes. Your son will soon outgrow you."

"Jason is Eight."

"Oh, don't get me started on that child. I don't know what it is about you two – you do everything right, but it comes out so... Well, I don't like it."

Marvin has nothing to say to that. He pushes the bar to the back of his mind, and he waits.

"I mean you're not young anymore, Marvin. And your father is not young. And God, what that kid said that Seder –"

"He was nervous." Marvin lies.

"All he had to do was sing one goddamn song! The goddamn Four Questions! You wouldn't sing either, you know, in your days. Showtunes, yes, but the Haggadah? God forbid. It was humiliating." She takes a deep breath. "And he looks so much like you." He can see her in his mind's eye, rubbing her temple with long, painted fingernails. "He looks up to you. He doesn’t care about anything because you don't."

"Hey! You know, Trina is a parent too, here – "

"Oh, give me a break, Marv, there's no Trina. A collection of recessive genes, that girl. You could have married an Echo with similar results."

Marvin should defend his son, at least. He says nothing. 

"It's time to grow up, Marvin. Is that how you want your father to remember you when he's gone?" And then, "It's just a psychiatrist, Marvin. For heaven's sake, if money is the issue here we could work something ou –"

"Money _is not_ the issue." There is smoke coming out of his ears, he's pretty sure. And Marvin thinks: _he could remember worse, his father, Marvin, these days, is up to worse_. And Marvin thinks: _I'm not sure I care that much anymore._ And Marvin says: "You said his name was Mendel Weisenbachfeld?"

"I have his phone number right here."

And so it goes.

 

"I have to say," Mendel tells him, once Marvin is seated, tired, uncomfortable and pissed off, too agitated to even remove his blazer – he doesn't want to talk to anyone, so God only knows why he's agreed to pay seventy dollars to do just that. "You surprised me."

"Oh, yeah." Marvin says, conceding the need for conversation. "Surprised the wife, too."

Mendel sends a half smile his way. Marvin wonders about him, sometimes. Wonders what his deal is, if he has any friends. His complete and utter indifference towards Marvin's queerness had made Marvin wonder, at first, if he was queer too. Except he's not, as far as Marvin is able to tell. He's just… unshook, by the freaks of society, by low-lives, as long as they are able to pay him. "What about your… um. Whizzer, was it?"

Marvin raises an eyebrow. "What about _my Whizzer_?" He can see, clear as day, Whizzer, miles away, wherever he is, scoffing indignantly. Shaking his head. Leaving in the middle of the night.

"Your boyfriend?"

"My boyfriend?"

Mendel shrugs, then seems to give up that specific line of questioning. "What is your current leaving situation?"

Marvin blinks. "I'm looking for a place."

"And currently you are residing in?"

Marvin smiles weakly. "Is this about my billing address?"

Mendel is unmoved.

Marvin is a resident of… hell, probably. After he passes away, that is. When he's asleep, that is. "Whizzer's apartment," he concedes. "It's practically the size of a closet." A beat. "It's in Queens."

Mendel nod's. Mendel jots something down in his notebook. Mendel turns his gaze back to Marvin.  "How do you feel, Marvin? About this change?"

Marvin's first reaction is to lash out. Mendel is not queer. Mendel does not have wife or a kid who now hates him. Mendel does not have a Whizzer. Mendel knows nothing about Marvin, will not ride to hell in Marvin's compartment (the lowest of the low, a queer Jew, God help him), and should not show false empathy. Marvin's second reaction, as it happens, is to go with his first instinct, and lash out. "How do I feel? How do you suppose I feel – I just tore apart my house, I just left my kid, my wife – for some guy who…" who doesn't even stay with me at his own fucking apartment. Who sleeps around and asks for Orchids and gives syphilis back.

That's the thing. You're supposed to leave for something – a woman, a man, a secret life as a serial killer, whatever rocks your boat. And Marvin had, for all intents and purposes, left for Whizzer Brown. Not for the idea of being a queer, not for the concept of living with a man. He left for a specific man, was left by a specific man, is now talking to a fucking shrink about his fucking life because fucking Whizzer Brown got bored by fucking a specific man, and had to go find another.

"Yes?" Prompts Mendel.

"Who's disloyal."

It's Mendel's turn to blink. "Weren't you also disloyal, Marvin?"

"I was loyal to him."

"Your wife, though, you were –"

"Oh, please." He waves his hand dismissingly. "All those names. Disloyalty, cheating. Does it even count if she knew all about it? She knew, she conceded, she compromised, she begged. There was no cheating. Because she knew. And now what, I'm supposed to be like her? That’s a nice hickey you've got there, darling, pass the sugar. _That's not me_." Breath in, breath out. He was so relieved, for a while, when he left, but relief burns too quickly. It's gone now.  

Mendel levels him with a stare. "So why not cast an ultimatum?"

"Obviously, because he'll –" leave. "Lie. What's the point?"

"Since he's disloyal."

"Yes."

Marvin, who'd questioned Mendel's heterosexuality when he wasn't greeted by hate, had looked at the situation all wrong. He's mother, in her turn, new just what she was doing. Mendel was not queer, but Marvin was rich, and acceptance was just a thing that his money could buy him.

"So how did Jason take it?" Mendel's voice tears him out of his thoughts, unwelcomed.

"What?" he asks, stupidly.

"Your son," Mendel explains. "Or –" he goes hurriedly through his notes, "is that not his name? I apologize, I sometimes have a thing with names, people tend to blur –"

"Sure," Marvin cuts him off. "That's his name."

"Oh!" comes the psychiatrist's brilliant commentary. He swallows. "The kid must be taking this hard."

"He's not much of a kid." This is an important distinction. Jason is very much Marvin's son, with his eyes and his hair and his brain and his yelling, but he is not a kid, per se. He is not young or impressionable. He is not cute. Most of the time, he does not seem to want any parenting, or any parents.

"Parents should not be grading their kids, that's what teachers are for."

"What?"

"Nothing." Mendel is always uncomfortable. It makes Marvin uncomfortable. "So how did your mother –"

"Oh, don't be a moron, obviously my mother doesn't know anything."

Mendel, who's running around in the world with the grace of a Jewish elephant and can be chased away by the mere act of asking for directions to the nearest gas station, never flinches when Marvin shouts. "She must know of the divorce by now. Do you have a plan?"

Marvin considers this. The neighbors must know by now, at the very least. "My parents moved to Florida to die quietly in humid weather. My plan is not to disturb them." He says at last, voice clipped. He can imagine it now, his mother, calling on Friday afternoon. His son, answering the phone. 'No, Grandma. Father can't come to the phone because he's queer. What? Oh, yes – it is a new development, though mother says a part of her must have known all along –' Fuck this.

Mendel says nothing.

"They're so far away. Father is practically a ghost anyway, can't even answers the phone –" Marvin's father is too weak to answer the phone because Marvin's mother had said: "Gosh, darling, in your state, you must be too weak to answer the phone." And so he was. And when Marvin's father will die, it'll be when she decides it must be time for him. He doesn't have long. Marriage, you see, is a binding contract between a man and a woman that can only be sealed with a baby. But kids grow up, and parents grow weary, and kids are gay, some of the time, at least, and parents move to another state with the kid's inheritance and their body that's falling apart and their marriage which is nothing more than inertia, and so what is the point? If the point is a kid, and kids grow up and disappoint you and forget that they ever cared what you thought of them and then leave with a man, live with a man, what is the point?

Mendel smiles weakly at him. "They're not dead yet."

Marvin shrugs. "Might as well be, I guess." Then he adds, pointedly. "You know how it is."

Mendel sputters, but chooses to ignore him. "Killed them off in your mind, I see?"

Marvin smiles thinly. "It's the merciful thing to do."

Mendel examines him with something akin to interest, and Marvin gets that feeling again, as if Mendel is studying him instead of trying to help, as if this is a weird scheme. Marvin remembers telling him: _I slept with a man the night before_ , and then knocking that stupid notebook from Mendel's hands when he made a move to write down in it, remembers leaving the meeting, feeling as if he's being photographed, followed, hunted. Except releasing that pressure building inside his throat had helped – that storm – him, jumping, recoiling, every time, at every queer thing, at every queer word, him, choking around Whizzer's name the night before, losing himself, forgetting his own. The only way to breathe again, it would seem, was to concede – Marvin had spent the last week stocking up on air, will spend next week wasting it by yelling.

As if set to prove Marvin's point, Mendel's next words are: "Well, Marvin, you must recall our previous conversation about parenting – unconditional love does not occur without work, without sincere willingness to meet each other half-way, without talking, face to face, about your – "

"Aren't those conditions?"

Mendel, who seems confused by the interruption, simply stares at him for a few moments, before replying: "No."

Marvin considers him, though, Mendel son of Arie, short, Jewish, unathletic kid that could only ever get by through either faith or brain. Mendel, who went Off the Derech, who does not wear Tallit, that Marvin is aware of, that somehow knows even less Aramaic than Marvin does, or at least pretends to, that once had looked Marvin straight in the eye and said: "This is crap, you know. White suburban families picture heaven as if it's a white suburban neighborhood and then they say they would not let you in there because they'd rather you wouldn't be there, right now." A beat, and then: "Also, heaven doesn't exist, people just die. Isn't this a nice weather we're having?"    

"You must know what it's like, though," Marvin says, slowly, because he's – angry, and While Mendel was not at fault, he was useless, he was the trigger. "Not growing into what your parents had wanted for you." He breathes through his nose, considering his next words. "I heard from mother that Jacob just had his Fifth son." Mendel, who's Wifeless and Sonless and Godless, whose father is a believer and his mother is a saint, sitting on a Saturday, helping another Godless, Wifeless ,Secular Jew with his Big Queer Sexuality Crisis.   

Mendel chokes on air. Marvin smiles.

"That's – " Mendel's voice is strangled. "Did she tell you I didn't come because of that one birthday – because I sent a card, and he has so many kids, like who even cares if he just had another one, I'll just catch him in one year when the follow up is born, or when – I have a respectable number of siblings, Marvin, and they have respectable number of children. I can’t care about all of them, you know –"

"Well sure. And they don't even live in New York anymore."

"Exactly – " he says, then catches himself. "Right," he adds, quietly.

A pause. "So I was thinking I'm going to stop telling my mother anything and see how that works out for me," Marvin suggest.

Mendel sighs, raising his palms to press against his temples. "That's a brilliant idea, Marvin. Clearly it's the right thing to do."

Marvin smiles. "Well, if it's a Doctor's order."    

Mendel shakes his head. "This isn't chess, you know." His eyes are moving erratically around the room, his voice is wearied in a way that's familiar.

"Well, it's not much of a therapy either, I don't think." He bites back.

Marvin expects the man to recoil; people that only have work in their lives are easy to take down, all that misguided sense of self-worth laid in one basket. But he laughs instead, raspy and amused and not at all brittle. "Well, Mister Marvin," he says, eventually, "As your therapist of almost four years, I am not going to take that personally."

Marvin can feel his eyes narrow. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing at all! Time is up, though. Say hi to the wife for me –"

Contrary to popular belief, you can, in fact, kill a person with a look. Nobody has yet to try hard enough, is all. But Marvin believes that he had made some progress, there.

"Oh, right!" Mendel raises his hand to his forehead while Marvin fishes his wallet for money to give him. Mendel accepts the cash, then raises his gaze back to Marvin. "Actually, it's eighty an hour now."

"Since when?"

"Since – um, just today, in fact. Did I not mention that?"

Marvin stares at him.

"But – we can postpone that for our next meeting, seeing that it’s a short notice –" he backtracks.

"No, by all means," Marvin replies, finding another ten and pushing it toward Mendel. "Here. People have got to make a living, right? Families to feed, and all that."

He leaves with a blinding headache, and with little to no ability to recall why he came in the first place.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whizzer crowds him, then, leans down so he's hovering over Marvin's form, stabilizing himself by grasping at the table from both sides of Marvin's head. Marvin is used to looking up at him, but this seems like overreaching, just a bit. "Just say it, Marv. You are getting cold feet." Whizzer's voice is full of poison, and Marvin wonders whether he knows how easy he is to read at this particular moment.

He takes a good look at Whizzer's apartment, standing at the door. This is a shit show. Grown-ups do not live in places like this. People like Marvin do not live like this. A man buys a house, a man leaves the house with the wife and the kid still in it, a man is left with nothing but his sexual orientation who's somehow supposed to become an identity, and a bank account. Marvin had built this family, hadn't he? Shouldn't he be allowed to come and go as he pleases?  

He walks in, gingerly, in case Whizzer is back, and is lying somewhere, asleep. He sits himself down on the crappy sofa and opens the crappy paper that he bought on the way back, and starts looking. He feels, for all intents and purposes, as a man playing trust-fall all by himself. He feels – free of Trina, and failing, and falling – in love, in debt, asleep. Afraid that this is somehow bad for his health. Whizzer had once told him: "Terrible sex in never good for you, that's why closeted men die sooner." And while that is not, in any way, shape or form, correct, he feels like it is, in a way. He was both recoiled too tight and spread too thin, and Trina was breaking under the weight of him.

He should pick up the phone. He should call. But he doesn't want to hear her voice, something in his chest is shrunk with anxiety, and -  he swears to God that he's allergic to her, only ever thinks of her because her absence is so calming. Because Whizzer isn't here right now, and he wishes that he was.

The thing with Trina was, she'd never wait for permission before entering a room. She did knock, of course, that was the polite thing to do, but she would never wait. The tapping of fingers against hard wood served as a warning, just as the click click clicking of her heals had. An 'I'm coming in, darling, please hide your porn'. It drove him insane, after a while. Her presence. The inescapability of it. What do you say to a husband who favors his right hand over you? What do you say to a husband who flinches when you walk into a room, because he was thinking, he was at peace, he forgot that you exist in the world. So Marvin turns to thinking in his office, where his secretary always waits for permission, and to jerking off in the shower, where it is acceptable to lock the door. When he meets Whizzer, being pleased at the concept of seeing him is perhaps the greatest relief of all. 

Whatever. The real question is, can he afford an apartment in Manhattan? Yes, and that's what important, here. He did not live in the city for so long, though. There is no sound of traffic where Marvin lives. You do not climb any stairs. "Oh, gosh," Whizzer had sad once. "A gay man worked his all adult life towards his dreams of a white picket fence only to realize it doesn't make him happy. A shocking revelation, Marv. You should write a novella."   

Maybe he should stay in the area, find a place in the neighborhood. If it's convenient for Whizzer to move in, maybe Marvin could actually get him to do it.

He's still looking at apartments when Whizzer walks in. Whizzer, in a tight pastel colored button-up and black slacks, opens the door as if he lives there – well, he does, but as if he hadn't just left, as if Marvin would just step the length of his front yard, pet the stupid dog, and sit down with his son and wife for dinner. "Where were you?"

Whizzer's gaze on him is sharp, it's an examination: _'Did you stay here all day waiting for me like some freak?_ ' And Marvin hadn't, but if this is a test, he's not entirely sure he passes, either way. It might as well be, since Whizzer has most definitely failed his.

He can feel Whizzer rolling his eyes. Whizzer's exasperation is something that can lower room temperature, his grudge a thing that can keep you up at night. "At work, Marvin darling," he drawls, closing the door behind him. "What, no dinner waiting?" He inquires, and while Marvin was looking forward to this fight all day, now he just feels overwhelmingly tired.

"I meant to make some and then realized that it's not my fucking job," he answers easily. "Do you always do sessions before 7 AM? That's an impressive work ethic."

Whizzer shrugs. "Oh, you meant to ask if I screwed someone? You should have just said, Marvin, I don't read minds." Whizzer's smile has sharp edges. Whizzer's eyes are shadowed by dark circles of a person who's been – out, clubbing, drinking, sleeping around, and Marvin can see it, he can see Whizzer, at 2 AM, abandoning Marvin's sleeping form and –

He feels sick, truly. "Oh no, Whizz, if you want to screw around that is just fine –"

Whizzer snorts, but Marvin goes on: "No really, dig your own fucking grave." He bites out. "Just please, dear, don't pass my anything you don't want to take care of yourself. No loving wife this time around." He smiles sweetly. "The hepatitis was not pretty."

Whizzer shakes his head. Marvin can't help but look, then. Wanting to trace his fingers across his collar bone, down to where his shirt is open too low, wanting a solid grasp at his hair, at his face, wanting closeness and affection and heat. "We can just die together at this apartment. Won't that be romantic?"

He used to dream – people with flat chests and short hair and slim waists, people he saw across the hall, at the Football field, strangers, movie stars, their body would be hard, and angular, and they would sometimes be stronger then he was, and Marvin did not know them, and Marvin did not want them, and Marvin couldn't sleep. It was a relief, really, to simply dream of Whizzer. A voice he recognized, a person he accepted. Marvin was pleased to see him, each time. Marvin felt safe. At the present, though, Marvin says: "It would unless you leave in the middle of the fucking night while I am fucking asleep!"

And Whizzer scoffs, and Marvin feels cut open. He thinks of Trina, pleading: "At least don't bring them to our home, for heaven's sake." Of himself, bringing Whizzer to their home, because Whizzer's bed is shitty.

"Whatever, do you want to order take out?"

Marvin stares at him.

"What? We don't have ingredients for dinner. I think the fridge contains, like, a couple of Tuborgs and a tomato."

"I drunk the Tuborgs," Marvin tells him.

"Of course," Whizzer nods. "Classy."

Marvin cracks a smile. A part of him, a desperate, repressed part of him, is still searching for whatever it is that Marvin wants at the moment – A win? Some dinner? A kiss? He settles for food, since this is what he's most likely to get. "Sure, just order some Pizza," he concedes. "Let's stay classy."

Whizzer's smile is brief, but he does reaches for the phone, dialing a number from one of the magnets on the fridge. Marvin, meanwhile, leans further into his stupid, creaky, clearly found near some garbage spot down the block, chair, listening to Whizzer's voice, wondering if he could just let it go – this day. If he even wants to.

Whizzer, after handing the number of Marvin's Mastercard from memory, turns back to him. "Dinner is own the way."

"Look, there is no way I can bring my son here. Like, ever." Letting things go is a thing that should only be done for money, anyway.

Whizzer is staring at Marvin in that way of his, like he's sure someone is making a joke but he doesn't seem to get it. It is usually a good sign to backtrack. Marvin doesn’t backtrack. "My son, you know," he reminds him, scathingly. Marvin's greatest asset, Marvin's greatest sacrifice. "That kid I left? You've met him. You played Chess against him and lost." It was a good day.  

Whizzer is quiet for three more seconds, before replying: "Well, I can't bring any hook-ups here while you're around, so I guess we're even, huh?"

What the – "No, we are not even, _that's my son_. Not some stranger you met at the public bathrooms near Macy's! I –" he swallows. "I love my kid, Whizzer, God." He's hands are shaking, though he's not sure why.

"And I love sleeping with strangers," Whizzer tells him evenly, "But you don't see me complaining."

" _Whizzer_." he's shouting now. His throat is sour, on top of everything. His good coat is at home. He hopes it's catching, whatever he has. "What the fuck is your problem, you knew I had a kid. What, is it suddenly uncool to have them? Is it too Hetero?"

 Whizzer raises an eyebrow. "Are you asking me if the act of sexual relations between a man and woman is hetero?"

"Are you jealous, is that it? I leave my wife for you and you're jealous of a kid? Or are you still jealous of my wife –"

"I was never jealous of your wife –"

"Oh, _yes you were_."

Whizzer breaths through his nose, fists clenched at his sides. "All I'm saying is – before you dump all over my place, how about you go and see if there is someone willing to visit?"

Marvin shakes his head. "Jason is my son, he needs me." He says, then after a beat. "We play chess. I help him with homework" Then, another beat. "Besides, he's a kid, he doesn’t get a choice."

Whizzer looks at him like he's the moron, here. "No," he slowly explains, "His mother gets the choice. Do you think she wants you around?"

"What you think that Trina will – Trina is not –"

"All I'm saying, Marvin, is that I've seen this before." And his voice is different now, almost gentle, and there is empathy in it, and God have mercy, when Whizzer Brown pities you. "You are a lonely man in his thirties, who had been seeing a psychiatrist for years now, who left to live in a crappy apartment in the bad part of town with his _friend_ , you think there's a court who wants kids near that?"

Marvin shakes his head. "Why would this go to court, what are you talking about?"

"How do you not get it? For someone who was so afraid of leaving the goddamn closet you must have known what you signed up for –"

"Why would Trina try to take my child away?"

"Ah, because your queer and she hates you and it is just very easy to do, she doesn't even have to try. Look, I've seen – "

"Trina is not like that."

Whizzer's voice rises an octave. "Oh, don't be an idiot, Marv, they are never like that until you're queer. They are always kind, and sweet, and they do charity work, and they will step in front of a bus for everyone, except for you – you are going to hell."

Marvin swallows. When he speaks next, he does so very slowly, through the rage and dread lodged in his throat. "Trina will not do this, I know her." And when Whizzer literally rolls his goddamn eyes at him, Marvin finds himself screaming: "Trina will do what I fucking tell her to do, and so should you!" He can barely breath. He remembers, in the waiting room, sitting with his head in his hand while Trina's cries tore through the hallway. She seemed – she sounded – in so much pain, it was near impossible to witness, to consume oxygen. It was impossible to move. It was impossible to love her.

Whizzer takes a step backwards, though he doesn't look frightened, not as he should. He looks… pissed. "Speak louder, Marv. Some of the neighbors can't here you." He smiles. "I know how much you love spectacles."

 He considers breaking down, sometimes, as an action of last resort. He'd say sorry, and Trina would forgive him. He'd say I love you, and Trina would concede. He'd sit himself down on the edge of the bed, clutching the sheets with his fists, looking as if he hadn't slept in days, looking as if he was about to cry – it's easy to beg, you see. Checks are easy to hand over if no one cashes them. Whizzer does not seem as if he'll be good at comfort, however. He will not be good at taking care of the sick. No sense of duty and no sense of propriety and no care in the world. Marvin would fall apart once, and Whizzer would leave until it's over. Marvin will fall apart twice, and Whizzer would just leave. There are no rules, where Whizzer comes from, and he's not native to Marvin's language – Marvin himself is not native to Marvin's language. Fighting is better – they both speak Petty fluently. They both know better than to take things to heart.       

"You assume that everyone is like you, that's your problem. Trina is not like you."

Whizzer snorts. "Isn't that why you left her?"

"She's not cruel. Maybe, you think she'll do all that because that's what you would have done, but she won't." He takes a deep breath. He knows all of this to be true. Whizzer is wrong. Marvin is right. All is right in the world. "And she can't raise him by herself. He is a Hell Child, and he might hate _me_ , but he never listens to _her_." Another deep breath. His throat does not work quite right. Neither does his lungs. "And she loves me. She won't do this to me."

This is how Whizzer looks at you when he feigns indifference. Hands deep in his pockets, shoulders raised, eyebrows raised, towering above you – a God who does not like being lied to, a God who has already waisted too much time on you. "You know her better than I do, surely."

Marvin sighs, running a trembling hand through his hair, which desperately needs washing. "I don't get why we are fighting over this. I just said I needed to see my son, who you know –"

"Oh, _come on_." It's a beautiful sight, when Whizzer blows up. He is a natural force, a wonder, and in that moment, you realize that he has nothing to do with you. That you are just one of the things that he will trample and crush. Marvin is in love with that man. It's all very unfortunate.

Whizzer crowds him, then, leans down so he's hovering over Marvin's form, stabilizing himself by grasping at the table from both sides of Marvin's head. Marvin is used to looking up at him, but this seems like overreaching, just a bit. "Just say it, Marv. You are getting cold feet." Whizzer's voice is full of poison, and Marvin wonders whether he knows how easy he is to read at this particular moment.

"Cold feet?" he manages to croak.

 "Yeah, c'mon, I've been waiting for that. Is it hard in the big bad world? Did you discover that they don't hand out prizes for doing whatever it is I've already done at Seventeen?"

It's claustrophobic, under Whizzer's searing gaze. Marvin remembers losing his head over it. Whizzer is angry at Marvin, Whizzer is disappointed in Marvin, Whizzer is indifferent to Marvin. Well, which one is it, and what does a man has to do to get some _proper_ attention around here? "What are you on about? Are you drunk?"

"No!" It's Whizzer's turn to shout. "You think you get to go back and forth like that – what, playing house with your wife, playing all out and proud and single with me –" He's fuming, now, and Marvin doesn't get it. He usually means for this to happen. He usually does get it.

"I'm not playing –"

"No, just shut up." And Whizzer's fists are clenched around the fabric of Marvin's shirt, and Marvin is being pulled upwards, upwards, until he's standing, trapped between Whizzer and his terrible excuse of a table, breathing the air the Whizzer is breathing. "You have reached my limit. _Listen to me_." His face is red, he's breath coming in and out in short, uneven gasps. He's palms are moving slowly up Marvin's shoulders, Marvin's collar bone, Marvin's neck, to frame Marvin's face, and a part of Marvin is afraid of being crushed, but Whizzer doesn't put in any pressure. He's simply keeping a hold of him. "Read my lips, Marv." And he's quiet now, sorta, sorta caressing Marvin's cheek with his thumb, and Marvin can feel him, kind of trembling against Marvin, his chest heaving. This is how a person falls apart – near you, into you, because of you. "Go back to her," he says, and his voice is soft, and his eyes are soft, and he has Marvin completely at his mercy, "and I'll fucking kill you."

Marvin simply stares at him, for one second, for two, for three, feeling an almost suicidal urge to laugh. Whizzer's eyes are boring into him, and suddenly it does not feel claustrophobic at all. "Whizzer," reaches forward with his hand, grabbing Whizzer by the waist, "I was just considering getting an apartment. You know, so that my Eleven-year-old could visit without being eaten by rats."

Whizzer's gaze is sharp. "You'll go back home to pick up your son, and there'll be dinner on the table, and like, an operating water heater, and you'll stay."

"My new apartment will have an operating water heater." There is something fluttering in Marvin's chest.

Whizzer snorts, "What, you gonna get a bachelor pad? At your age?"

"Well, I could live in my parent's basement, I suppose, but explaining you would be awkward." He attempts a smile. "And I'm not a bachelor, I don't think."

"Not married, though." Whizzer presses – Marvin, that is, further against the desk.

"I'll get a divorce lawyer tomorrow." He does smile, then, smug but restrained.

Whizzer breaths deeply, then, leans forward, until his forehead touches Marvin's, his hands coming to rest on both sides of Marvin's shoulders. Marvin wants to kiss him, very badly. Marvin waits. "You should get a place in Manhattan, Brooklyn's shit."

"You think so?"

"Get a place in Manhattan and I might come visit."

Marvin laughs, short and faint, feeling like a person who was just pulled to safety from the edge of a cliff. "Well, it is closer to the kid." He says, testing the surface.

Whizzer twists his face, "Well, Marv, God forbid I ever come between you and your family." And he kisses Marvin, then, except Marvin starts laughing, and laughing, and laughing, so the kiss goes all wrong, so their teeth clash, so Marvin tightens his hold on Whizzers waist and there is barely any space between them, but he pulls anyway, just in case. He feels giddy. Whizzer tells him to shut up, Whizzer tells him to "stop being a loser", but Marvin can barely hear him. He feels as if he's breathing in wind.

"You didn't trust me," he says, but he's smiling.

"Well, you're a terrible person." Comes Whizzer's answer. "I usually assume that you're lying."

Marvin tangles his fingers in Whizzer's hair, and pulls. When Whizzers gasps, it's against Marvin's mouth, and how could Marvin ever go back, Marvin needs this, Marvin –

"Well," he concedes, "I'm flattered either way." And he kisses him then, then kisses down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes. And then, well – he's already on knees. It's a heady feeling, making Whizzer scream his name. He's never going back.

 

The phone rings, and rings, and rings. For the first three years of her marriage, Trina would always sit by the phone. That was before she gave up on him, and before she went and got herself a job, as an office manager of some lawyer who did some work for Marvin's firm. Marvin had got it for her, the job, but she still acted as if this was some sort of rebellion, as if she left home despite of him. "A career?" His mother had said at Rosh Ha'Shana, when she found out. Jason was trying to eat a pomegranate and got red juice all over his chin, which made Marvin laugh, for some reason, which made Jason laugh, which made Trina look at them, shocked, and ask if he let the kid have some of the wine. "Only unsatisfied women get a career. It's sends a massage of a troubled household." His mother concluded, which made Trina snort. "Please," Marvin's father had answered, to everyone's surprise. "It's hardly a career, she's a secretary." Silence. Trina's lower lip was bearing teeth marks. "I didn't mean it like that, sweetheart, I'm just saying, you work for Goldman, don't you? This isn't a job, really, this is being a mother to a Fifty-year-old lawyer. Isn't that what women do anyway?" Nobody contradicted him.

So she would drop Jason off at kindergarten, and she would drive for work, and she would return to pick Jason up from kindergarten, and she would drive home, and she would fix Jason lunch, and she would sit by the phone, because it was right there, far likelier to talk to her than her son. She would always answer on the first ring. Jason, at age of Four or Five, thought that it was a game, and tried to answer before she could. When he heard a voice on the other end he would hang up, every time.   

This is what Marvin thinks about, when at last the phone is picked up and a young, annoyed sounding voice answers: "What?"

"Jason?" Marvin asks, which is stupid, really, because what other difficult children does he have?

"I'm sorry," Jason corrects. "What I meant to say is, 'Hello! So nice of you to call us on this fine day on account of how my father has left us, no, we do not want pastries, no, mother would not like to wed your Fifty-year-old-brother-who-is-single, no, we most definitely not want you to drop by. So good of you to check on us, though. Bye –"

"Jason, this is me, stop playing games."

On the end of the line there is silence. Then the sharp beeping of a disconnected call. Marvin sighs. He knows how this game is played – with Trina, with Jason. Jason, at the age of eleven, had learned both of their tricks – he uses Marvin against Trina, and he uses Marvin against Marvin. He hasn't cried in years. So Marvin redials, and once again, his son picks up the phone. "You've reached the Addams Family household; how can I help you?"

 "By acting normal, Wednesday." Marvin rolls his eyes. He's tired. He wants his son to be nice to him. He should get a damn dog.

Jason takes a very indignant breath. "I'm _a boy_."

"Sure," Marvin tells him, unimpressed. "I am aware."

"Or have you forgotten already?" Jason asks, resentment clear in his voice. Or maybe it's just his normal voice. Maybe this is just him. He should ask Mendel, some time. "You know, since you left."

Marvin clears his throat. He's flying blind, here. He's not sure what Trina had told the boy, he's not sure what Jason knows, what he thinks. He thinks, Jason likes Whizzer. He thinks, that's crap, Jason doesn't even like me. He thinks, I'm not running scared from an Eleven-year-old kid. "I did leave," he answers, eventually, and he's using his Appeasing Trina Voice, he's Salesman Voice. It never worked on the kid, really, but it's an instinct, Marvin can't unlearn it (it never worked on Whizzer, either).

"Well," Jason says, voice scathing, as if Marvin is wasting his time. "Are you going to come back?"

"Did your mother told you to ask this?"

A pause. Jason's voice quivers on the word: "Yes."

"No," Marvin says, correcting him, almost. "I'm not coming back." And then there's silence. "Jason," he starts, hesitantly. "I need to know – what did your mother tell you? About the reason I left?"

The thing about kids is, they don't follow, they lead. As a parent, you have just about zero control over that thing that walks around the world, using your name, causing troubles. The Pied Piper of Hamelin was a victim, every parent can tell you that. And Jason, well, he looks like Marvin and talks like Marvin and hates like Marvin, but he's Trina's, somehow. And Marvin needs – he needs – it's as if he'll never be able to run fast enough.

"She explained that you left because you didn't love her anymore."

"Okay."

"Because you're in love with a man."

Marvin raises an eyebrow. "She said in love?"

"I don't remember." He can hear the nonchalance in his son's voice. "She might have said a bad word instead."

Marvin can't help but roll his eyes. Trina would always pretend she knew less than she did, too.

"What else did she say?"

Jason's voice his dry, and humorless, and weary. Exhausted from climbing walls. "That you’re an asshole," Jason says, smugly.

Talking to his son should not be akin to pulling teeth, is the thing. They tell you that kids will bring you joy. They tell you that they'll bring your life purpose. Give it meaning, grant you perspective. They said that they will change you. Marvin was just as queer and unhappy after Jason was born, is the thing. It felt insane, two Twenty-year-olds running around, and crying, and laughing, and sleeping, and staying awake, because of a baby. Getting married because of a baby. No decision that was made in the last Eleven years was made for any reason beside Jason. The world should not revolve around children. It should not make promises it can't keep.

"Fantastic," he says. "May I speak with your mother?"

"No."

He blinks. "No?"

"She said that you left her and not me." Jason's tone is accusatory. Jason is government and legislator and the courts, in one small, bitter package. "But we sure don't live in the same house anymore."

"Jason –" he starts.

"It's fine." Jason tells him. "I'm taking over your office."

Marvin can't help but laugh at that. "Look, kid, I'll get an apartment very soon, and then you can come and visit, okay? You'll love it, you'll have two bedrooms.  We'll decorate it however you want."

"I don't care about that." The tone is clipped. Then, "Will he live there with you?"

That gives Marvin a pause. Will he? "I'm not sure yet," he admits.

"Well, it's good to know that you left for _a sure thing_." Talking to your son should not be like talking to the voices in your head, is the thing. He should not know you this well. He should not resent you this much. "When he leaves you, will you beg mom to take you back? That's what happened with the Levins after Mr. Levin's secretary –"

"I'll come home to pick up my stuff." He cuts him off. "And to see you."

"I won't be there." Marvin rubs at his eyes. Jason run away once, when he was Seven, for exactly half an hour. Once he realized he hated all people who were not his parents even more than he hated his parents, he came back all on his own.

"We can play some chess."

"Agh."

"Listen. Ah." How do you ask that? Why won't he insist to speak with Trina? Why does he still have to go through this, if he left? "Did your mother said anything about a lawyer – "

"I play chess alone." Jason states, suddenly.

"What?"

"I play chess alone," he repeats, very slowly, deliberately. "Like you do when you can't sleep." A pause. "You're not the only one who can do that."

"Look, can you tell your mother I'm looking for her and maybe give her this number, I'll read it to you –"

"No." Jason says.

He hangs up.

Marvin does not bother calling again. 


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are two options here, once Whizzer returns home and finds him. A. Whizzer will roll his eyes, say: If I knew you'll be too drunk to get it up, I'd have stayed at the bar, and go take a shower. B. Whizzer smiles. Whizzer joins him. Whizzer beats him to the bottom of every bottle, every time.

The only thing in Whizzer's apartment that seems familiar is a liquor cabinet, and while that used to be Trina's thing (drunk people do stupid things and say stupid things and ask for stupid things, they call people they shouldn't be calling, and Marvin kept his drinking outside his house), for a second, just looking at the – well, vodka, inexplicably, Whizzer's liquor cabinet is a shelf with a bottle of Smirnoff on it, next to a margarita mix, but he picks it up, and he takes two glasses from the cupboard, and he pours Whizzer a glass, and he pours himself a glass, and he drinks. He fucking hates vodka, people like him were not built for vodka. He drinks some more. There are two options here, once Whizzer returns home and finds him. A. Whizzer will roll his eyes, say: If I knew you'll be too drunk to get it up, I'd have stayed at the bar, and go take a shower. B. Whizzer smiles. Whizzer joins him. Whizzer beats him to the bottom of every bottle, every time.

He doesn't look up when the door opens, he looks at his glass, he concentrates on the remnants of nausea, from alcohol, from – whatever. About a month ago, he'd go home, and he'd think of Whizzer, and he'd – be somewhere else. He'll feel better. He's not sure what to think about, right at this second.

Whizzer closes the door, paces until he's standing right next to him, and takes the damn glass. "Le'Haim." He says, and downs it in one gulp.

Marvin looks up at him, smiling.

 

"I think," Whizzer tells him, his eyes dark, his voice a slur. "I think you are about to go bald."

Marvin – well, he doesn’t gasp, exactly, but it's close, because that seems unfair, not to mention uncalled for, not to mention – he has a son to think about. You can't go around having children and passing on your baldness genes. "I won't," Marvin says, also in a slur, and Marvin likes them like this – voices blurry and vision blurry, until everything tangles, until it feels as if they're kissing even when they are not. "No history of baldness in my family."

Whizzer snorts. "Well, you could always be the first one. Come on, Marv, first to queer, first to bald. Your mother will have an aneurism, isn't that what you want?"

Marvin wrinkles his nose. "Right, I'm a true revolutionary. Would you like me to get fat, next?" he asks, lying on the sofa, his head near Whizzer's thigh. "Why are we even talking about this?" he mumbles against Whizzer's trousers, and it should worry him that he can't remember, not for the life of him, but he doesn't have the power or the guts or the will to be the center of that exciting moment in time. "Well," he manages to croak out, when Whizzer fails to provide any response. "It's not like you'll be spared. You will grow just as grey and wrinkled as the rest of us." He thinks, then adds: "And queer isn't a verb."

Whizzer snorts. "I will not." A pause. "And sure it is." He places his hand on Marvin's lower thigh, then proceed to move it slowly up, up, up. "See?"

Marvin's breath stutters, but then again, it always does, these days. "That's you being a tease, Whizzer. Not an action that encompasses the concept of queerness."

"Who talks like that when their drunk, fuck's sake," Whizzer says, but he's laughing, and he's burying his fingers in Marvin's hair, massaging his sculp.

"Aren't you afraid of that, though?" He asks, voice quiet. "Growing old and alone?"

"Is this why we're drunk?" Whizzer asks him with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. "I did not sign up for Existential drunk, I signed up for sad drunk."

"What's the difference?" he inquires, mildly curious.

"You're attractive in the first and obnoxious in the later?"

Right. Marvin chooses to ignore that. "I mean that's why you have kids, right? Families? So that you won't die alone."

"Gosh, and I thought and was in order to keep up with society's expectations and misguided concept of masculinity." Whizzer drawls. Marvin looks up at him. Whizzer's eyebrows are raised. "So what, you want your son to take care of you in your old age? Like you do with your mother?"

Marvin scoffs. "She's in Florida with my inheritance money, how is that not me taking care of her?"

"I don't even know where to start with that one."

Marvin sighs. "Well, can you imagine that someday? Growing old with someone?" Whizzer's fingers stop their motion in Marvin's hair, and tug, like he's berating him. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to, Marv.

Marvin draws closer to him, somehow, and wonders. With a girl, you can always put a ring on her finger. But this is a lawless land he's moved to, where a person's emergency contact does not count for family, where people can just get up and leave. Is marriage a trap? Sure, but people need that trap. So Marvin asks: "Do you love me?" Just to spite him.

"Marvin." Whizzer's voice has a warning in it.

Passion die, you see, and love fades. But rejection is forever. The novelty of that fist clenching around your heart, that feeling, like you're bleeding, somewhere, somehow, that's here to stay, and isn't that nice. "I could love you," he tells him. "If you'll love me back."

"Christ, Marvin." Whizzer lets go of him completely, and Marvin's vision is swimming and when his head falls it feels as if it would never hit the couch, as if it would just keep falling. "You know this isn't a game of chicken, you either love me or you don't."

Marvin is silent.

"You can't like, condition your unconditional love, with, like, love. That's meaningless."

Marvin looks up at him. "Is this why you never take me seriously?"

Whizzer looks at him as if he's gone insane. That's the problem with him, he's never as drunk as he seems to be, never as careless as he seems to be. Marvin falls for that, every time. "I take you very seriously, Marv."

Marvin shakes his head. It took him awhile, the comprehension that the need for love hides the need to love within it, that love that you do not return may appear solid but is burnt through too quickly, consumed, cast away. Maybe if she loved him more, he'd be able to live off it, but she didn't, and he doesn't, and you choose sex in the end, Marvin did, and Whizzer does, and does, and does. Human beings are useless. They cheat on their wife and they get syphilis and they fall of a cliff and die.

It's unfair, really: people stop believing you when you tell them you love him but they never stop believing when you tell them you don't.  "I don't believe you," he mumbles, trying to lift his head, to place it back on top of Whizzer's thigh, but he fails, and Whizzer doesn't take pity on him. "Will you move in with me when I get a new place?" he asks. "I promise it'll be a nice place."

He can feel Whizzer shifts next to him, can hear him breathing, and Marvin wants him, but he can't move like he should, it's like trying to have a fight in a dream. Two arms are wrapped around his chest, then, and he's pulled so that he's half lying in Whizzer's lap. "You were about to fall of the damn couch," Whizzer tells him. "This is why you're not taken seriously."

Marvin simply stares back at him. He's beautiful. How was Marvin meant to stay with his wife, after meeting him. He'd see him everywhere, he'd close his eyes and he'd see him and he'll open his eyes because he thought he'd heard his voice, and Marvin never knew that it's possible to like being chased by the memory of a person, by the implications of him, by the ghost of him. By the feel of his lips or the touch of his hands.

"Ask me nicely some other time," Whizzer tells him all of the sudden, and the bottle is back in Whizzer's hand, and Marvin can see him taking a large sip, can see his throat working. "I'll consider it," he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, and Marvin wants to kiss him and taste Vodka, Marvin wants to touch him and feel – he doesn't realize he raised his hand in the general direction of Whizzer's face until Whizzer catches it in his, keeping a hold of him.

When Marvin looks up at him, a smile at the corners of his mouth, Whizzer is kind of, sort of, smiling right back.

 

The next day he – well, he never passes out, is the thing. Whizzer falls asleep, hunched on the terrible, terrible couch, and Marvin, realizing he had lost his audience, that Whizzer's hold on his hair is going slack, his hand falling away, puts himself together, muscle by muscle, his arms, his legs, his shoulders, his knees, picks himself up, and stumbles across the living room in search of some water. It's not terribly cold, but he's shivering in response to – something, can't seem to stop, and maybe it's the flue but it feels like there is something stuck in his throat, like he could start screaming and never, ever stop. That would definitely wake Whizzer up, though, and Marvin's not up for entertaining, not up for – conversations, not the kind they have, anyway. Not up for sex either, probably. He makes himself some coffee, sits himself by the kitchen table, and spends the next fifteen minutes staring blankly at the coffee mug. Should he be drinking coffee? He hasn't been sleeping right lately, after all.

First week of insomnia, Whizzer had run his fingers along the bags under Marvin's eyes and told him the he looked like a drug addict. The second week, Whizzer had run his fingers through Marvin's hair and offered to do whatever he can to make sure Marvin was tired enough to fall asleep. The third week, Whizzer had stopped commenting, fearing that there is an actual meaning waiting for him at the end on an actual conversation. He had been careful with Marvin, then, who alternated between running on insane surges of adrenalin to feeling too exhausted to even pick up a pencil.

Mendel refused to prescribe him some pills. Whizzer had offered to get him some anyway. Or, like, other kind of pills. Or, if you're not asleep anyway, Marv, we can have some fun tonight. But Marvin did not want fun. Marvin was a distressed Jew having an existential crisis, and he'd wanted his pain acknowledged. Mendel had told him those were growing pains, but did not elaborate at whatever it is Marvin was growing into. Marvin was not happy with that, either.  

Men fall apart, is the thing, and then men put themselves back together. He starts by stumbling into the shower. The water are cold, the mirror in the bathroom is broken, but Marvin takes his seven years of bad luck in stride. He remembers, the week leading up to his weeding, the constant nausea, he'd drink alone in his room and he'd throw up alone into his trash-can and then he would smile at his future wife for the rest of the day, a routine that worked just fine right up to that moment when he somehow emptied the content of his stomach near the bed section at Pottery Barn. He remembers waking up on his wedding day and not understanding why he's awake, or alive. In he's dreams, he was Fourteen-year-old, and he'd drowned in the neighbors' kiddie pool.

Once he's out of the shower he gets dressed, then makes his way back into the kitchen, and begin his long journey back to civilization by making some calls. Marvin is a grown up. He is not a self-proclaimed pretty-boy with no career to speak of and a Twenty in the bank. Grown-ups have apartments. They have jobs, and back pains, and kids.

He walks back into the living room, contemplates moving Whizzer into a bed, Whizzer, who's half sitting, half lying on top of the sofa, passed out like someone who – well, like someone who spent last night drinking with his boyfriend, a shell of a man who could not stomach a seven minutes conversation with his son without falling apart at the seams, breaking apart, right at the center. Grown-ups go to a psychiatrist, not a children therapist, and they don't use narcotics, and they provide for their family, and it's all perfectly normal. He picks Whizzer's lame excuse for a blanket from the bedroom and drapes it over him, and it's too heavy, falls from over Whizzer's shoulders, drapes across his knees, over the living room floor and the couch. He reaches out, rans his hand, briefly, in Whizzer's hair, then quickly backtracks when Whizzer stirs. He leaves, then – the room, the apartment, grabbing his keys and his wallet hurriedly on the way out. It's not the grown-up thing to do, necessarily, but there you go.

 

He meets with an owner of a Three Bedrooms apartment on the Upper West Side that practically puts the keys in his front pocket, with another in a building two blocks away that got the building in a divorce and practically puts her hand in his front pocket, with a Messianic Jew in the same building that catches up to him on his way out, and apparently does not have an apartment to rent, but will offer Marvin a room if Marvin will only consider accepting Jesus Christ as his lord and savior – ("I always let them talk," Whizzer had told him, "I think it's funny, every religion that wants me stoned, fighting over me." And Marvin had said: "They don't stone people anymore." And Whizzer had said: "No, they find you in a back ally and use a baseball bat." And he had smiled, and kissed Marvin's forehead in the middle of the street, the lunatic, the God of War, the Angel of Death).

He settles for a third-floor apartment in Midtown, realizing, as it were, that he can't afford to live amongst friends, where good intentioned, good-for-nothing someone's Jewish mother lived, someone who will know his own good natured, good-for-nothing Someone's Jewish Mother, or one of her friends, or her accountant, or her Rabbi, who will tell her – everything.  He can't meet the neighbor's one single thirty-years-old daughter who is unmarried but is just lovely, I promise you, it's just that she wanted to have a career – but she's over that now. He can't play that game anymore, he can't live near his mother's spies anymore, he just can't.

He's in his prospective apartment, staring dispassionately at the two bedrooms attached to the living room. Two bedrooms, for when his son comes over. Two bedrooms, for when he and his Friend have to pretend to be roommates. The woman who lives next door tells him that this is a building where people leave each other be, let each other live, which is a lie, because later, the owner tell him: "A black woman, a Doctor, can you believe that? And she has this _friend_ , a woman, white, by the way –", but he assumes that if a black woman who is also a Doctor who has a _friend_ , a woman, white by the way, can find it in her to survive in this building, then so can he. He assumes, worst comes to worst, that at least he's not her, that is, at least he won't be the first in the building to be burned on a stick.

He runs in to her again in his way down, after telling Mrs. Levi (who blessedly immigrated to the US from Morocco a couple years back, and never heard of Marvin's mother) that he is interested, and scheduling a meeting to sign the lease tomorrow evening. Physically runs into her, that is, reaching out to steady her so that they won't both fall down the stairs. She smiles at him, but it's strained, and when she says "sorry" it has an edge to it, as if she meant to add: "even though it was basically your fault, you brute," but decided against it.

Marvin smiles one of his charming smiles, which she ignores, and offers to carry her shopping bags for her, which she accepts, somewhat begrudgingly. Her apartment is nice, has a homey feel to it, one that Marvin had thought can only ever be achieved in the suburbs, with a chimney and a yard. There is a scent of something cooking, which only slightly masks the smell of something burning. "Um." He starts.

"My roommate cooks." She tells him. "Not always successfully." Marvin suddenly has a vision of Whizzer, bent over what was essentially a Fifty Dollar worth of steak, that he had managed to turn into what was, essentially, dust. He smiles despite himself.

"Tell me about it." He offers his hand to shake. "I'm Marvin."

She examines his outstretched hand, as if this is some contract she's signing with the entire White & Male population, before eventually shaking it. She has a firm grip, too, as if she had already learnt what's expected of her, and she tells him: "Dr. Charlotte – " when a loud noise from the direction of what Marvin assumes is the kitchen disrupts her, but she does not bother with exploring the cause.

"A Doctor," he repeats, slowly, because he did know, but still, it does not roll off the tongue, exactly. He's about to say, well – something, about that, despite or maybe due to her raised eyebrows, the challenge in her eyes, in the tone of her voice, in the set of her shoulders. Whizzer used to do that, give him those 'oh God, be more of a white, rich, male, I dare you,' and usually, Marvin rose to the challenge. So he's all set out to squeeze her hand, once more, and say something along the lines of: 'well, good for you, dear,' except that what he actually says instead is: "I like your ring." A pause. There is a plain, gold ring on her right hand, just the opposite of where the Ring Finger actually is, and Marvin is staring at it, and something is clutching at his chest, at his throat.

She startles at that, almost jumping in place, really, her gaze slowly moving from Marvin's eyes and the band on her finger. "Thank you," she says slowly.

Whizzer had told him about this, once, with a shrug of his shoulder and a roll of his eyes, taking Marvin's right hand in his left one, Marvin's left hand in his right one, saying: "What do you say, Marv? Want one for each?" And he was mocking – Marvin, that is, he was mocking Marvin, but Marvin had honestly thought that it was – nice. That he would like to know where it's safe. That he would like to wear a ring that does not make him feel like Frodo Baggins, that is, that he would no set out to destroy with the fire of a volcano, that he would not need in order to become invisible. That it's very natural to want that. It made sense to him, right then. It makes sense to him, now.

He smiles at her, at this Doctor, who against all odds is standing here, in her white rob, in her home, a _friend_ cooking dinner in the kitchen. The world can be a wonderful place, really. You just have to work hard, and make it so.

"I'd introduce you to Delia, but I'm afraid that if she leaves the stove the kitchen will literally burn," she says the last sentence with a hiss, the way Trina used to tell people Marvin cannot be trusted with mowing the yard.

His smile widens. "Some other time," he nods. Though it's clear she doesn't trust him with Delia, just yet.

Once again, she raises her eyebrows at him. She's less defensive, though, or maybe she still is, but it's a regular, human, defense. Not 'I'm a queer struggling to explain the presence of a significant other in my life without him calling the morality police' defense.  She's a Doctor. Meaning, she's a responsible adult. There is no way that she lives the way Whizzer does. There is no way that she stands for the way Whizzer lives.   

She snorts. "Sure. Maybe you'll have some friends to introduce me, too."

He keeps smiling at her. And he says nothing. And he wonders if Whizzer will like her or hate her, if he'll be impressed by her achievements or begrudge them. He wonders – he wants her to like him. It's a strange feeling but he stands behind it, so he says nothing. Eventually, she walks him to the door, and he leaves.

 

He moves in within the week, having taken Whizzer to pick out furniture for him, accepting Whizzer's claim that he cannot be trusted with that. It was nice, in a way. Whizzer seemed to choose items he actually liked, not ones that were the most extravagant or expensive, as if he actually meant to use them. The bed, ironically, was purchased alone, since Marvin might have chosen to throw his entire adult life away for a man who likes drinking Pina-coladas and wear pastel-colored button-ups that were not created for men, but he is still aware of what walking into a Walmart with that kind of man and buying a King-sized bed will do to their chances of getting the shit kicked out of them in the parking lot, not to mention, Marvin's ability to show his face in Temple on the High Holidays. 

Whizzer helps him paint, and assemble furniture, and tells him that every picture he's trying to hang is crooked, until Marvin notices that he's not even looking to check. Cordelia, the friend, arrives to grit him with a smile and a tray of home-made Halvah, which is just – really, truly bad, absolutely terrible, and he's not sure why he doesn't tell her, really, except she seems so happy to see him, that it makes his heart skip a beat, and he would have done anything to keep her happy with him, right at that moment.

Later that night, him and Whizzer passing a bottle of wine between them like teenagers, sitting on the floor, with their back against a perfectly good couch, Marvin tells him: "…she went on and on about Kosher Cuisine, I mean, for at least ten minutes, and I don't even keep Kosher, I'd tell her, but she didn't give me a chance." He takes a long sip, and swallows, tries to concentrate on the way it makes his head spin. Alcohol usually keep Whizzer around longer. Marvin has been failing in nixing that habit for a while now. "And if I was!" he almost chokes on something, though he's not sure on what, but he's there, stumbling across words and struggling to breath, "Then _technically_ I wouldn't be able to eat her cooking, since she's not Jewish. So who cares! I mean, I don't care, why does she care?"

Whizzer blinks at him. "Well, I definitely don't care about any of that."   

"Great, thanks."

"Just let the Lesbian Shiksa be nice to you, Marvin."

"I did – I will. She's got it wrong, is all I'm saying –"

"Nobody cares, Marvin."

Marvin lets out a long sigh, then lets himself tilt sideways, closer to Whizzer, pressing until Whizzer wraps an arm around his shoulders. "It just seems weird, you know? Why would she keep doing something she's so bad at? Cooking, I mean."

Whizzer snorts. "You're kidding, right?" He says against Marvin's hair, "Mister I'm gonna be Hetero if it kills me, Mister white picket fence –"

Marvin elbows him. "I had a wife and a kid, Whizzer. That's pretty much all they ask of you."

He can practically feel Whizzer rolling his eyes. "They? Who's they? Do they grade your performance?"

Marvin buries his head in the crook between Whizzer's shoulder and neck, mumbling: "Parents, I guess. Rabbis… Tax authorities…"

Whizzer is laughing quietly, shoulders shaking. "Oh, no, Marv, did I mess with your taxes?" He raises his hand to his mouth. "How could I ever forgive myself?"

"Oh, shut up." Marvin berates him. "You like my money, don't you?"

"I like money, in general. Yours is simply readily available."

"Sure."

"So do you feel that you exceled in it?"

Marvin raises his head to look at him. "In what?"

Whizzer shrugs. "Husband-hood? Fatherhood?"

"That's not a word," Marvin tells him. Then, "Jason hangs up every time I call." He rubs at his eyes. "And Trina doesn't answer the phone, ever." A pause, "That kid id so strange, I swear, it's like he's a ghost hunting the damn house."

"Well, that's delightful," Whizzer comments.

"I know, right?" He wants – to sleep, mostly, with the assurance that Whizzer won't leave in the middle of the night. Except they hadn't even had sex yet, and Whizzer is either annoyed with him or amused by him, or both, and Marvin is not able to tell which one is it, at the moment. "Anyway, I'm right about the proper age for leaving my wife for a mistress."  

Whizzer leans forward then, pressing their mouths together, tangling his fingers in Marvin's hair. When he pulls back, Marvin can barely recall who they are, but maybe that's the wine messing with him. "Well, A+ display of Heterosexuality there, Marv," he drawls.

Marvin smirks. There is something fluttering in his chest, more violent than butterflies, messing with his digestion, bruising his lungs.

"I should go soon."  This is how Whizzer asks him for sex, when he does not feel like out right asking.

This is how Marvin asks Whizzer to move in with him: "You should just move in with me."

Whizzer kisses him then, once, twice, three times. He then pushes Marvin away, looks him in the eye, and says: "Nah," before diving back in.

 


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason sits himself down in the middle of the living room sofa, originally meant for three people, effectively creating an island. "I broke it," he announces.   
> Marvin sighs, sits in front of him, in the arm chair. Marvin examines the chess board. Black, set in front of him, is indeed losing, but it's not as fatal as Jason thinks it is. "Who's turn is it?'  
> "I threw it against the wall, and then some pieces fell down the stairs, and then the dog ate my king, and so after we took the dog to the vet mom said that I could have yours." Jason explains, voice even.

 

The next morning, Whizzer refuses to wake up, and Marvin oversleeps, and after getting dressed hastily in each and every item that Whizzer hates the most and drinking a lousy cup of coffee, he makes his way to work, feeling like a person marching the walk of shame, even though he was leaving his own home. He's greeted nicely, had been greeted nicely ever since the divorce. They are all sorry to hear about the separation. They are all with him during those hard times. About half of them had been through this, and he receives five cards of the same Divorce Lawyer, from five different people. They all want to know if he left for someone, and who is she, and is she hot, and is she young, like, college young, maybe. They all want him to catch up on every task he had neglected during his week-long vacation. They all don't care that much.

So Marvin makes the rounds, talks with his boss, floating around the office like a fly, before stepping into his own office where he will be having a rough, uninhabited, life and death wrestling match with paperwork.

He's elbows deep in numbers plus a desperate need for some coffee, plus an intense, sudden urge to stab himself with a letter opener, and then maybe call Whizzer and say: 'I was stabbed by a letter opener', when Applebaum steps into his office uninvited, and sits himself down on the sofa. Marvin does not have the required energy to be here. He does not have the required energy to lie. It was so… freeing, that she knew why he left, with whom he left. This, stepping in here, walking talking laughing commiserating, feels like regression.  Marvin, and his pretty young mistress that he won't talk about, Marvin and his midlife crisis. Marvin, if you hand me your ex-wife's number I'll give you mine's.

"Can I help you?" Marvin asks, in a way he hopes is pleasant.

"I don't know, Marv, can you actually finish your case load in time, even though you're already behind on everything?" He seems ill at ease, and while normally Marvin enjoyed making men feel that way, right now it leaves a sour taste in his throat.

Marvin levels his sweetest smile at him, his I Got My Girlfriend Pregnant When We Were Twenty and the Kid Might Be the Reincarnation of Napoleon and Then I cheated on Her With a Man and Left her and I Might Be Ten Percent Responsible to How Much the Firm Got All Screwed Over the Previous Month, But You're At Least Twenty Percent Responsible and We Both Know That. That smile. Marvin has been using it successfully for years, it's a very elaborate smile. "Well, I know being able to actually do my job will sure improve the chances of that ever happening."

"I'm just saying, we are all cutting you some slack because of how heart-broken you must be, but you don't seem very heart-broken to me."

Marvin should go and find Whizzer during lunch break, should sit next to him and tangle his fingers in Whizzer hair and tell Whizzer that work is bullshit, but that he's doing all this for him. For his son. For him. Ask if Whizzer needs a new Jacket, maybe. "I'm putting on a brave face," he declares. "Don't I look incredibly brave?"

Soul snorts. "You look like your Fairy Godmother let you stay out past midnight, princess."

Marvin feels something unpleasant curls at the pit of his stomach. "I drive a Chevi, no pumpkins in sight," he says dryly, because what can he say to that?

"Yeah, but you drive to the worse part of town."

Marvin should find Whizzer over lunch break and tell him he had had to bury his entire sense of self in a dark, lonely corner of his mind during work hours, and can Whizzer help him coax it out please, he can barely remember his own name here. "What, like Jersey?"

"No, like West Village." A silence. "People see you, you know. With that Male prostitu – " something stops him from finishing, perhaps the look on Marvin's face. "Whatever, he's barely even male, from what I hear. And your wife calls you at the office, when you say you're working late, and she's crying…" He doesn't seem smug, more like – righteous, as if by he's fighting the good fight by fighting with Marvin, right this second. Marvin is the reason earth-quicks are formed. Marvin is the reason for the destruction of the Second Temple, Marvin is the reason why children are unsafe and women cry at night. 

Marvin, in his mind, is barely a person, at this point, and so it's unclear why he's laughing.

He thinks that it might be part of a plan. Or he might be having a seizure. He should see Whizzer over lunch break and tell him that Soul Applebaum thinks he's a male prostitute, who's barely male. Whizzer will probably find that funny without getting lost in panic and shame along the way.             

 He remembers, once upon a time, while trying to memorize, for school, the distinction between the new wave of antisemitism, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century and the plain old one, seeing protests and caricatures and essays, and thinking, but is this what those people wanted to do with their time? Didn't they have a life? Was that all there was – the world, and how people like Marvin destroyed it?

"Don't you have work to do?"  he asks, plainly. He's numb and unimpressed, and he never stopped laughing, really, now that he thinks about it.

Soul grits his teeth, takes a step forward, fists clenched and eyes glinting. What a fucking idiot. "I don't work with people like you."

"You've worked with me for years, so it would appear that you are." He smiles. "Are you threatening to tell on me if I don't leave? If I don't, what, _bend over_ –"   

Soul flinches, and Marvin's smile widens. If Marvin was ever going to be a statistic, it would not be that sort of statistic. He would not lose his job, or his son, or the high regard in which he's held by his peers. Marvin is smart, and he has thought this through. He won't be losing anything. "You mean like how I can tell both your wife and your boss that you cost us the Harts as clients because you had to sleep with their daughter who is barely even legal –"

"She was Twenty-Three, and you have no legs to stand on –"

"What you don't have is a prenup."

Marvin smirk is taken straight out of Whizzer's book. It's really more of a sneer.  

Soul fumes. He steps closer, and Marvin's desk is between them, except at the moment he seems like a potential weapon more than a shield. Once, at a bar, some idiot grabbed Marvin's arm when Marvin told him no and turned to leave, and Whizzer was there in three seconds flat, looming over them both, smiling, saying that he's sorry, but he needs Marvin to come with him and fuck him in the back ally, and he sounded like he was just some boy who was needy and jealous and cheap, but the hand on the man's shoulder was pressing hard, the glint in his eyes was cold, and he was incredibly tall -  he was, by himself, a moving force, enough to reel people in, enough to chase people away. It got Marvin hard, and then it got Marvin off. But he's still not sure if he liked it.   

"Be smug all you want," he spits eventually. He's frozen in spot, reaching out for Marvin but stopping himself halfway. "It won't change the fact that –"

"Your wife is a lesbian? Sure it won't, but we all have our crosses to bear."

Something is thrown across the room, then hits the wall behind Marvin. When Marvin turns, he sees that it's the paper weight Jason had made for him when he was five, pretty much just a cube that he painted blue ("Why a cube?" he asked Trina. "Because he can sculpt one." Was her reply). Something constricts in Marvin's chest, but he shakes himself back to numbness.

"We're approaching assault here, Soul." 'You think if you're murdered outside this club the cops will care that you're rich? Nobody is going to bother with you if your reason of death is Queer, Marvin.' Whizzer had told him once. It was right after Dan White received his five years sentence, and Whizzer had taken that personally. But Marvin is not part of that statistic. He's not a part of that crowd. "We both know you can't do anything to me," Marvin tells him calmly. "You approached me in order to properly express your hatred. Now you have. Walk away."

"My wife is not a lesbian. Why – are you saying that because you're attracted to me?"

That's when Marvin begins laughing in earnest. He crumbles backwards into his chair and he can't stop, he can't speak, he can't breathe. Something else is thrown, and this time it nixes Marvin on the head, near his temple. It's his fucking coffee mug (Whizzer got it for him, and it had said: "I'm not bossy, I just have better ideas." And Marvin was smitten at the time).

He barely notices when Souls leaves, closing the office door behind him.         

 

He leaves at Five O'clock on the dot, getting into his car and driving on auto-pilot. He thinks of coming home and burying his head in the space between Whizzer's shoulder and neck, and maybe staying there, and maybe dying there. He thinks, that if he were to get in a car crush right now, that no one would know to tell Whizzer, that no one would bother with that. Nobody wants to know that you're queer, is the thing. Some days he'd leave bed in the morning feeling so exposed it was as if he did not own any skin, and each act of tolerance toward his pretend heterosexuality had felt like kindness. But that's gone now. Maybe Soul could tell the police to call Whizzer.  

He doesn't fully realize where he is until he's parking in his assigned parking space, feeling as if he'd ran out of oxygen. What would make a criminal turn himself in? Guilt. Pressure. Knowing in his bones that he's the one to blame. Marvin turn off the car's engine, unbuckle himself. He doesn't want her to touch him, his face or his shoulder or his arm. He doesn't want her to say his name, or to cry. All those things are inevitable. 

He opens stumbles out of his car and walk slowly down the road to face his wife.

 

Jason is the one to open the door. Upon Marvin's leaving, he seems to have taken control on the comings and goings on this household. He is the sphinx, standing in the doorway, throwing riddles on every and any passerby. Marvin was not about to knock. Marvin has a key, and Marvin owns the place. In some cultures, Marvin also owns the people in it, so there. Except he did knock.

Here is what Marvin's son sees when he opens the door: A man, wearing his fresh-outa-office suite, his hair a mess, his forehead sweaty, his car parked down the road like an escape vehicle, standing at his own doorway, attempting an hello, attempting a smile, failing at both.

Jason asks: "Did you come for your things?" And Marvin knows, for that wild second, that if he'll say: 'Jason, would you like to come with me?' Jason'll pack a tooth brush and his copy of the Never-Ending Story and he will come. Marvin keeps quiet instead.

"I came to see how you two were doing."

Jason stares him down. "I'm playing chess," he informs him slowly. "You can take over for the side that's losing." Then he moves aside, allowing Marvin to step in.

"How are you doing, kid?" Speaking with Jason is like speaking to a wall that's slowly closing in on you. His teachers are concerned about his lack of friends. Marvin is too unsurprised to be concerned.

"I'm using your chess set." Jason tells him. He's not bragging per se – it's more of a punishment, though Marvin's not sure it quite hits home.

"What happened to yours?" He asks, though he has a feeling. Should he have hugged Jason? Right now, that is, as he walked in. It did not seem to be a valid possibility, or else it would have occurred to him.  

Jason sits himself down in the middle of the living room sofa, originally meant for three people, effectively creating an island. "I broke it," he announces.

Marvin sighs, sits in front of him, in the arm chair. Marvin examines the chess board. Black, set in front of him, is indeed losing, but it's not as fatal as Jason thinks it is. "Who's turn is it?'

"I threw it against the wall, and then some pieces fell down the stairs, and then the dog ate my king, and so after we took the dog to the vet mom said that I could have yours." Jason explains, voice even.

Marvin blinks. "You can, I could have told you that." Chess didn't take the space in Marvin's life that Jason always assumed it did. It was a boredom thing, and a bonding thing. It was, _I cannot for the life of me play Monopoly one more time, would you like me to teach you how to play chess, kid?_ Said to his five-year-old, who was at this point aware that everything made specifically for children was less, and would have agreed to anything grown up.

"You couldn't have, you weren't here."

"Could have asked me over the phone," Marvin contradicts him.

"Doesn't matter," Jason says, petulantly. "It's mine now." Marvin has gotten his first chess set as a present for his Bar-Mitzva from some uncle who did not have the decency to simply write him a check. Marvin had shown such skill, that he couldn't help but be furious with his parents, for not introducing the game to him sooner. He could have been a kid genius, he's sure of that. Staring down his son, right this second, though, it scarcely matters – brains, that is. And money. "It's your turn," Jason tells him. Marvin makes his first move. Jason's eyebrows furrow. Marvin wonders if he was actually cheering for Black. If he gave Black to Marvin so that Marvin could save it.

"So where is your mother?" he asks carefully, after a few minutes pass.

"Somewhere in the city having a secret affair with a younger man."

Marvin sputters. "What?"

Jason smiles the way Marvin does, except a child is not supposed to be smiling this way. "Oh no, wait. That's you."

Marvin sighs. You can't win with Jason. Since what you're trying to win is his affection, and what he has to offer is a momentary lack of contempt, you can't ever win. He chooses to ignore the barb, and asks instead: "How is the chess club?"

Jason's face is reshaped into a scowl. "Everyone are dumb and mom won't let me quit and Miss. Dahan says I can't skip a level since I don't get along with my peers, which I figured meant that I was a sour loser, and that older kids will beat me up, or something, but what does that matter if I never lose to anybody but you and you're not even home anymore, so I told her that, and then she asked to speak with mom and recommended counseling."   

Marvin considers this. "So you're saying that this is my fault."

"Yes! Weren't you listening?" Jason's voice is scathing.

Well, if the Jewish Center knows his mother must know by now. Though, unless Trina hands over his new landline she has no way to reach him, so at least there is that.

"Oh," Jason suddenly says. "Grandma Ruth called yesterday." He always does that. As if he knows, as if he's a small child in possession of the Gold Codes with which to obliviate his parents. "She asked for your new number, so I gave it to her."

Marvin closes his eyes. "That's great Jason," he bites out. "Whizzer is there today, so maybe he could answer the phone and I could throw myself off the empire state building."

Jason's eyes widen. "What?"

"Shit." He spits out. "I'm sorry, Jason, it was a bad joke."

Jason's voice is sardonic. "I thought it was funny."

"Don't be morbid. You know your mother doesn't like that."

Jason ignores that. "So how is Whizzer? He hasn't been around since you left with him." There is something mean about his gaze, and this is why one cannot be out and proud – because even ten-year-olds know that homosexuality is a chink in the armor, where they can find a perch for their knife and twist and push.

"Jason, I don't think –"

"Oh no, please, do tell. He's such an interesting character, isn't he?" Trina is standing in the doorway, in her work clothes, looking as if she did not sleep in about two weeks. Her voice wakes something in Marvin, some well or self-pity and resentment he always forgets exist until she walks into a room. "You know he never told me he was queer but I could sort of tell, from the beginning. I thought, I shouldn't tell you, you seem like you won't be tolerant of that sort of life style." Her smile is like nothing Marvin had ever seen before. Like, how did Marvin ever kissed her without hurting himself – that sort of smile.

"Not all of us can be as liberal as you are." He says, voice tight.

"Well, it's always nice to see people grow, dear." Silence. "Jason, honey, how about you stay here and allow your father and I some time to discuss matters in the kitchen?"

Jason looks defiantly at her. "I can hear everything that happens in the kitchen from here, you know." He levels his gaze at them both. "Everything."

"For heaven's sake, we'll go to my Study." He crosses the room, puts his hand on the small of Trina's back (some days it's the only way to get her to fucking move) and leads her out of the living room and down the hall, toward his Study. When he opens the door, he finds – nothing. It's not a mess, or anything. It's not the world after the flood (if Marvin ever built an ark to save humanity, Whizzer wouldn't be able to ride in it), it's not a site of ruins. But – most of his stuff are missing. His comic Magazines, and his cassettes collection, and his radio, and about half of his books – everything by Isaac Asimov, most definitely, and his favorite pen, and his favorite Atlas, and his chess set.

"Um." He clears his throat. "Did you start packing for me, or…?"

"Oh," she laughs nervously. "No, no. Jason took everything about a week after you left. I would have stopped him, but I was in bed, and I didn't feel like doing anything."

"Right."

"If you want them back you can ask him yourself."

Which, sure thing, Marvin will get right on that. His son, the crow. His son, collecting shining things and books about chess and books concerning Game Theory, his son, hauled up in his room, collecting dust.

"What are you doing here, Marv?" She asks, and it's not mean, exactly, but it's like she's expecting an actual answer, which does seem mean, at this point. Her hair hangs limply around her face, across her shoulders, like she hasn't washed it in days. She's wearing that skirt that only fits when she loses those three pounds that she's not supposed to lose. He wonders if this truly is a reaction to the absence of him, since she never seemed to like him when he was around. He wonders of she's being dramatic, or being hysteric, or being depressed. Maybe she was the one who needed a psychiatrist all along.

"I…" _hoped for some sympathy and that hope did not lead me to Whizzer Brown's door-step._ "Thought we could discuss. Future arrangements."

She shakes her head. "Have your lawyer call my lawyer, I suppose."

Marvin raises his eyebrow. "Do you have a lawyer already?"

Her shoulders fall. "No, not yet." She lowers her gaze in a way that's meant to make Marvin raise her chin with his thumb, but he doesn’t do that anymore, so she simply stays down. "You?"

He considers lying, realizes there is no point. "Not yet."

"You know, Hannah is a lesbian and they make it work, she and her husband," she tells him, weakly.

Marvin snorts. "My neighbors are lesbians," he tells her, though he's not sure why that's an information she ought to have.

"What." She seems scandalized, frankly more than what Marvin feels is appropriate. "Marvin, are you –" she lowers her voice, "If you're living in some kind of a commune –"

"I'm not – are you insane?"

"I'm insane? Me?"

"It's a building! A regular building! They just happen to be lesbians, oh my God, Trina –"

"Fine, fine." She raises her hand to stop him, then falls into a nearby chair, which creaks under the sudden weight of her. "Fuck." She says. "Oh God. I'll get a divorce Lawyer tomorrow, I guess," she promises, and she seems so utterly miserable, Marvin wouldn't know how to reach her even if he'd wanted to. She's wrapped in her own bubble. She might want to be saved, but not by him, not really.

"Trina, why is this so –"

"I had plans, you know." Her voice it is cutting. "Jason would leave for college in eight years, and we would be able to travel. You know, I figured that's the one good thing about being knocked up so young, and then never again – you get to still be young when he leaves." She breathes through what is clearly tears, stuck down her throat. "I'd have more time, I could open a business, or a charity, or…" Another shaky breath. "We were gonna see the new Millennium together." She bursts into tears, then. "We were gonna have grandchildren. We were gonna have a Silver Wedding and now we have a divorce –" She's almost sobbing, at this point, but quietly, as if she's trying to pretend none of this is happening. "Did you ever think about any of that?"

He doesn't say: 'I never thought more than a month ahead ever since we got married because it made me want kill myself.' He doesn't say, you're still young now, and I'm leaving, isn't that enough?' Instead, he tells her: "Trina, I need you to stop."

"Well, fuck you too!" Her voice rises in one single moment, from a whisper to what could be considered a scream, and Marvin flinches.

 He swallows. Then he says, "I want Jason on Weekends."

She stares.

"I mean it. You can't not let me see Jason. I will fight you on that." And he will lose. Whizzer was right. He was going to lose.

"Are you fucking kidding me here, Marv?" She's leaning backwards in her chair, hair spilling all around her, looking at the ceiling as if it held the meaning of life within the paint. "You think I'm raising him _alone_?" she gasps, somewhat in delay, and then starts laughing, somewhat hysterically. "I mean, have you even talked to him lately?'

Marvin shakes his head. "Um, yeah, he hates my guts."

"Yeah, you think this is bad? Wait and see what happens if I keep you from him, he will literally –" she raises a trembling hand to her mouth. "Not letting you see him. Honestly." She takes a deep breath. "You are going to be here every time I –" Another deep breath. "Every time he needs you, is that clear?" 

Marvin nods. He feels dizzy. Whether it's relief, or a recent wave of an old sense of anxiety, he doesn't know.

"He told Mrs. Goldstein that you said he was going to be president, you know. He tells that to everyone he meets."

Marvin can feel a migraine coming up, but he's smiling despite himself. "With a Queer father, he better not be, I think."

She snorts. "Can you imagine him assembling a government? He only likes two people – that's us, and he thinks we're the stupidest humans on earth, I mean, what's he gonna do, make mommy the Secretary of State? He's going to become the first American Caesar and we're the ones to blame for that."

Marvin blinks at her. "Trina, are you drunk?" he asks her, through a choked fit of laughter.

"Oh, shut up, you know I'm right." She smiles one of her teary smiles, which Marvin used to like, but he can't remember why, for the life of him.  He'd never seen Whizzer cries in the entirety of the time they knew each other, not once. 

"Well, then I guess we better be nice to him –" That's when the phone rings. Marvin is about to answer, out of habit, mostly, but Jason apparently gets there first, because the ringing ceases, and there is a faint, "Hello, Jason speaking," before he yells, "It's Grandpa on the phone!" before resuming a quiet conversation with whichever Grandpa it is.

"Yes," Marvin can hear it like a whisper, like the faint buzz of his co-workers, like the voices in his head. "Yes, dad is here right now, would you like to – oh. Oh… Well. Um, bless you. Still with the coughing, I would have gotten you some water but I'm not near you. Um, bless you." Marvin's father it is, then.

Marvin is reminded, inexplicably, of that time during the Seder, when Jason was five, refusing to sing the Four Questions, refusing to look for the Afikoman, just truly not expressing any Passover spirit, running around the living room with a new toy of some Super Hero (He found the Afikoman inside Marvin's chess set, which he went for right after the meal. It was Trina's idea), mumbling "I'm simple, I'm simple!", because that's the Son he was given to read in the school play. It was funny, because of how he said it (Without the L), but also because even then it was perfectly clear to anyone who knew him that he really, really, wasn't. 

"No, I'm fine," Jason says, and Marvin leaves the office, steps out into the living room, where his son is sitting in Marvin's armchair like he's the king of the world, already. "Yes, my mom and dad are getting a divorce. That is the truth."

Somewhere to his right, there's Trina passing by, arranging herself behind Jason, putting a careful hand on his shoulder, which he immediately shrugs off. "No, it's not a hard time, actually. You think it would be, but I'm mature for my age… Yes, I know that it's okay to be sad, Grandpa, I'm just not sad."

From behind him, Trina scoffs indignantly, as if Jason announced that children dying in Africa was not sad.

"Well, I don't think she said that. I mean, Grandma thinks I'm weird and she wants dad to take me to a specialist and she said that mom coddles me and that dad reading Frankenstein to me when I was six destroyed my brain." He's looking Marvin straight in the eye, then, chin tilted upwards, face twisted into something ugly. When he was three, and Trina hired a Photographer, he cried whenever someone (read: Trina) told him to smile. "Which I think is funny, because it's not like she's the mother of the year, you know, what with dad being a Queer and leaving us and everything."

There is a sound of ripping somewhere, and when Marvin finally locates it, having been convinced, for a while, that it was something in his brain, something in his chest, he sees that it's Trina, with a determined look on her face and a disconnected phone cord held like a life line in her hand. "Well," she says shakily. "Queer can mean any number of things."

"He can barely hear anymore," Marvin replies, and the words echo inside his head, bumping into the walls of his skull. There is a tide rising in him, with no outlet for it. He already admitted to being Queer. He already left. What's left to be done? "He can't understand anything said to him in a long-distance call, that's why I never stop Jason from saying whatever he wants to him."

Jason is still looking at him, and his face turn stricken. Marvin's not sure of this is the shame of being outmatched, or just plain shame. He's not sure if Jason fully understands the way bruises are now forming atop Marvin's chest, the way he will lie in bed at night, awake, listening to the sounds of his bones crumble. Or maybe he does. It takes a certain level of understanding to send a massage. "An eye for an eye makes the entire world blind, you know." He tells him evenly.

Jason tilts his head to the side. "That's a lie." And Marvin can feel him, at this moment, Marvin is him, Marvin is the grief in his eyes and the anger in his chest, Marvin is the mold from which this Jason is made and Marvin is fucked.

"I'll fix it," Trina tells him. "I'll call and make sure that he –"

"Oh, please, he'll die before he'll realize anything real about the world, and my mother doesn't listen to a word he says, but be my guest, if it matters to you." In some alternative universe, someone is killing him right now. Someone is beating the shit out of him, he's sure of it.

She shakes her head, her hair falling into her face. He's not sure how she came to the conclusion that this was her failure, just the he was willing to concede the fact. "I hate your parents, Marvin, I don't give a damn."

Marvin half-smile at her. "Your finest quality was your willingness to fight with my mother."

Her face contorts in – something. She doesn't have a face for anger, but she grew into it, somehow, from fight to fight, from hearing Whizzer's name on the phone to finding him in her living room. "Well Gosh, Marv, then why would you throw that all away?"

"I have to go," he tells her, because it seems, at the moment, as if there is a single reason to being alive and that reason is so far away from this house, Marvin will never be able to reach it, and he needs to run, he needs to hurry, he needs to find Whizzer Brown and drink him in and breath him in and –  

That's when Jason takes a hurried step towards him, mouth opening with the beginning of a sound. Funny story: Jason's first word was 'dad', and it was uttered when he was a year-and-a-half, and Marvin wasn't home. And Marvin could reach out and hug him, but Marvin's is so small right now, the kid would crush him, with small, bony elbows and small, bony fists. Marvin is so small, he's practically the size of an ant. It would be insane for anyone to touch him.  

He tears himself away from Jason's gaze, and he leaves. Everything is easier the second time around.                 


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What's wrong with you?" He sounds impatient. Marvin could draw him close, but Marvin doesn't feel like getting up for something that's not a sure thing. "I told you I was angry with you."
> 
> "Yes," Marvin acknowledges.
> 
> "Ask me why."

His apartment is Whizzerless. There's a smell of something burning, and Marvin chucks it off to the moron putting the Makineta on the gas without putting water in it first. Whatever. This is no time to dwell on Whizzer and how he has the homemaking skills of a… well, of a man.  He throws himself down on the armchair, picks up the phone, and dials.

Mendel picks up on the seventh ring. "Who is it?" His voice is groggy, as if he's been woken up, because it's already Nine PM, and that is apparently how Dr. Mendel Weisenbachfeld rolls.

"Were you asleep?" Marvin asks incredulously. This is a person who makes twice as Marvin per hour, who's job is spewing nonsense at people, and if he's asleep at Nine PM then Marvin has no faith in the world anymore. 

"Wha – no," he stutters, and Marvin can hear rustling, some hurried movement, then something falling, Mendel probably. "I was resting my head, you know, since there is a couch in my office – Bob, is that you?"

Marvin sputters. "No, it's not fucking Bob."

"Oh," Mendel replies, "Marvin," and he sounds even more tired, all of the sudden, which is uncalled for, "What's going on?"

"My son is possessed by the devil, this is what's going on, so glad you have time to rest, though –"

There's some coughing, long and wet and jarring, and Marvin has to distance the phone from his ear. When it's done, Mendel doesn't recover, he doesn't speak, just breathes loudly, in and out, from all across town, and Marvin thinks, this is not why this technology was invented. They are abusing science and human innovation right now.  

"Oh, God," he sighs. "Are you sick?"

Another coughing fit. Marvin could just hang up, why doesn’t Marvin just hang up. "Ah, it would seem so, Mister Marvin. It would seem so. Sorry for all the –"

Marvin can see him in his mind's eye, waving his hand like a lunatic. "I have a surname, you know –" he starts, then backtracks, "Wait, then what about our appointment tomorrow? Is it canceled?" Without waiting for a response, Marvin considers. "I have no intention of catching anything you have," he berates him.

"Of course you don't, I'm not sleeping with you, after all –"

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing, I said nothing. Look, I have pneumonia, obviously all of my meetings are canceled for the rest of the week, so how about we just reschedule for a later da –"

"Well, when were you going to call and let me know, exactly? I have to reorganize my entire day to make these meetings, you know, this is extremely unprofessional –"

Marvin is then cut off by another coughing fit, though it somehow feels passive aggressive this time around. "Marvin," he says, when the whizzing subsides, "Is there something you need?"

Marvin pauses to think. It annoys him – that he's being asked to get to the point. Mendel never gets to the point. He considers his options. When he finally says: "My son tried to tell my father I left Trina for another… for a man, today, and while some people might say: _oh, he's a kid, he doesn’t know what he's doing_ , my son always know what he's doing, so that bull."

Mendel is quiet for a long while. "And how do you feel about that?" 

"Are you kidding me? How do I feel about that?" It's hard to breath, once more, though Marvin's not sure why. Anger does not usually leave him breathless. "My son hates me for abandoning him so he's trying to get my father to –" He stops, swallows. "My father is half dead, so joke's on him, anyway."

"Marvin," Mendel starts, slowly. "Have you considered sending your son to therapy?" 

"No," is Marvin's automatic response, because of course he fucking considered it. "How come you don't care, Mendel?" He asks, and he didn’t know he was going to do that, he's going to regret that, clearly.

"What – about what? About you? That's inappropriate –"

"Oh my God, no." There's a chill crawling down Marvin's spine, and he can't shake it away. "I'm talking about my attraction to men. Who are not you. Literally any man but you, Mendel. Literally. Christ."

"Yeah, okay," Mendel sighs. "I'm being a professional, Marvin, I can't care." 

"Oh, come on," he scoffs. "There is indifference and then there is encouraging. Have you ever lay with a man, Marvin? Are you planning on laying with a man, Marvin? How was it, Marvin? I mean, God, you enabled everything."

Mendel mumbles something that sounds like: "Fuck this," before he finally says, aloud: "Fuck this." And then, "I told you I don't care because I don't care, Marvin, and I encouraged you to explore because this is what you wanted from me. A person comes in and asks for a confirmation of his deteriorating mental state for a tort lawsuit against that neighbor that once stepped on his left toe, I give him that. A person comes in and asks me to push him towards sleeping with men, I give him that. I'm a giver. This is what I'm paid for."

Marvin considers this. "I feel like a sitting duck," he says eventually, voice tired, and he doesn't believe Mendel, necessarily, mostly because Mendel will lose it after two minutes in front of a judge who is asking him questions under an oath, so he continues: "Like I had this – immunity, that came with being who I was. And I gave that up." He closes his eyes. He opens them. "I mean, because even the lowest of the low can hurt me now, everybody can hurt me, I'm unemployable, I'm unfit for - everything. I'm – this is shit."

Mendel is quiet. Marvin wonders what Mendel would have said to someone like Whizzer, to someone like Trina, who'd sit in front of him and tell him things that just weren't true. He wonders if Mendel fell back to sleep.

"You know what I still can't figure out? Is why did I do it. Why did I have to leave her. Even she can't figure that out. I mean, was is Honesty Hour on PBS? Who cares if I'm queer if I've got a family, there were no ultimatums, there was no reason to –"

Mendel says nothing, still. Marvin wonders if he's somewhere, hiding under a table.

"And don't be all, oh Mister Marvin, you did it for love, you want someone to love you, he doesn't love me, he's incapable of – he never asked me to leave her, I'd leave sooner if he asked, maybe, but he never – " his voice is strained, and Marvin is losing it, he's voice, that is, the ability to form words that make sense. "But hey, why not, _get out of the fucking closet_ , they say. _Tear a family apart so that you could be true to yourself_ , they say. _Die alone and shunned from society in the name of authenticity_ , I mean, isn't that a riot, they never take people like me seriously, all those out and proud gay men, do they even know what it took, sleeping next to her for more than a decade, I just couldn't – I'm allergic, it's like I'm allergic to her, her son, maybe it's her, maybe she's why I left."

No response whatsoever.

"I'm afraid I'm going to miss her." A pause. "What does that say about me? If I miss her?"

Nothing.

"Mendel! Are you even listening to me?" He's half shouting, at this point, because why the hell not. "Does it seem like I'm paying you for you to disappear the minute I'm – Shit." He can’t breathe, suddenly, his throat closes up and his voice stutters and he feels as if he's about to die, alone in his apartment, a cautionary tale.

"Marvin," Mendel's voice is strained. He sounds exhausted, which is insane, he doesn't have a child. He doesn't even have a Whizzer. "What the fuck?"

"I can't lose my job," Marvin tells him through gritted teeth. No job no alimony no visitation rights no family nothing to show for the last decade of his life. No job no Mendel no one to listen while Marvin struggles to sort through the chaos in his head. No job no shopping no apartment no Whizzer, probably. Definitely. No Whizzer. 

"Are you about to?"

Marvin closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He thinks. He is a wise man. He thinks. "No." He is a wise man. He saw Soul coming. He'll see everyone else coming. No.

"What else?"

"My son – I –" He wasn't losing Jason either, though. Trina had made that clear. "My wife –"

"Your wife?"

"My family. I had a family. I had –" Trina was always there when he needed to be alone. She was always there when he needed company. She knew what through thick and thin meant. She took her oaths seriously, not because of God, but because of people. This broken thing in the core of her soul. He never wants to see her again. He misses her.

Mendel sounds – frustrated, with Marvin, with the world, with the fly buzzing near the window all the way across town.

"They still exist, don't they?" A pause. "Marvin, is _he_ about to leave you? Is this what's this all about?"

Marvin considers this. It's the mental equivalent of stepping on a Lego. "I don't think so?"

"Then what the hell is your problem? Just let me sleep." Mendel is, in fact, shouting at him, then swept away into another coughing fit.

"Oh, you know what, fuck you. This is what happens when you see the shrink your mother wants you to see –"

"You’re here because of your mother?"

"Of course I am! If you were any good you would know that!"

"Marvin," Marvin can hear him physically composes himself, picking himself up off of the floor. "Would you like to reschedule our meeting for Friday at Nine AM?"

"Fine."

"Great." Mendel sounds relieved. "It's going to be fine, Marvin, just try to sit and talk with your boyfriend –"

Marvin's fuses burn, then. He's not sure why, but it's dark in his head, suddenly, and he can't see forward, he can't see. "I don't need a boyfriend, I need a fucking psychiatrist that works," he cries, then casts Mendel away from him, that is the phone, that is, he casts the phone to the floor, where it lands with a bang, the beeping sound of the open receiver following him into the dark spaces of his mind.  

 

When Whizzer arrive, Marvin is still sitting there, his head in his hands, trying to exist away from himself. The click of the lock comes as a shock, and Marvin flinches, wishes that he weren't home, wishing that he was a sleep, wishing he hadn't given Whizzer his second spare key.

In a way, it's a relief to see his face. It settles something in Marvin's chest that was curled tight and ready to jump, ready to burn. It's something to look at that isn't inward.

Whizzer lets the door close behind him and steps toward the living room, stopping when his foot meets the corpse of a previously functioning phone, laying on the floor. "Oh, you broke the phone?" he asks, mildly, but his gaze is sinister and there is something strained in his voice. "I wanted to do that."

Marvin snorts. "I'll let you break the next one."

Whizzer's hair is a mess, wrecked by the wind, and he's wearing a button up in the color of Lilac. Marvin wasn't even aware they made items for men in that color, but cheers. There is a smirk hiding in the edge of his smile, that seems, somehow, insincere. Talk to your boyfriend, Marvin, bang your head against the wall, Marvin, then maybe pray, Marvin, play trust fall with God, see how fast you crash your skull against the floor.

"I think it's a lost opportunity, all those time I was mad at you and didn't bother with throwing things." Whizzer tells him. "Like right now." Riddle me this, Marvin, what's more likely to exist, God or your boyfriend? Answer, Mister Marvin, how is it that you don't believe in God, but believe that you'll be going to hell anyway?

Marvin's wishes Whizzer's presence could be relaxing. That he could sink into him and let go instead of tensing up. He wishes Whizzer did not have a hickey that Marvin did not give him on the crook of his neck. Marvin forces a fake smile on. "What could I have possibly done to you, my dear? We didn't even see each other today." He wishes he'd slept with another man on the way home, wishes he had it in him. The fact that closeted gay men have to let strangers touch them if they want to get off, ever, does not mean Marvin wants strangers touching him. Whizzer believes that he was blessed with the possibility of repercussion free sex. Marvin had gotten a girl pregnant.  Marvin got an STD. Marvin got divorced. Marvin believed in repercussions. They Made sense. They kept adults in line.    

"What's wrong with you?" He sounds impatient. Marvin could draw him close, but Marvin doesn't feel like getting up for something that's not a sure thing. "I told you I was angry with you."

"Yes," Marvin acknowledges.

"Ask me why."

 Marvin rans a hand through his hair. He wants… some food, or a drink, or a hug. He wants to go back and tell his son that since he was the one to buy Marvin the Chess set on his birthday two years ago, stealing it away is the equivalent of asking for a gift back, which is impolite, and Trina had taught him better than that. "I don't care why. Stand in line with my son and I'll get to you."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Marv," Whizzer's voice is scathing, and frankly it's a relief. "Is something wrong in Familyland? Please, share every detail right before you ask me to blow you on this sofa."

Marvin searches, in himself, for an answer that will make him stop, that will make that thing that crawls in Marvin's chest subside, that tide of pure horror flooding his brain cease, but there is nothing, so he says nothing. He doesn’t feel like engaging in this. He doesn't feel like a fight. He doesn’t feel like having angry sex on the couch. He doesn’t feel – much, except that he feels like an idiot.  

"Please stop." Break down, beg, plead. If all else fails, cry. Push hard enough, long enough, and you'll get what you want. Which is peace. He wants some peace. He wants to be left alone. He wants his spare key back. "I don't want to fight."

Something twists in Whizzer expression, hateful, ugly. When Whizzer's evil, it always leaves marks on his skin. Everything wrong he ever did stays with Marvin. The fact that he doesn't look as good under a certain light. The fact that he's younger than Marvin, and already that flawed. But if there is a painting of Whizzer in an attic somewhere, at least Marvin wasn't the one to paint it. "Did you just say 'I don't want to fight' to me?" Whizzer bites out. "Like I'm your wife? What, you don't want to go to sleep angry, too?"

"I already fought with five people today," he explains plainly. "I just want our fighting to be special."

Whizzer snorts. "It's not special. I fight with everyone." Then he says, "I overcooked the fucking chicken." He's arms are folded across his chest, and he's looking at Marvin as if Marvin was the fire and heat destroying their food.

"What are you on about? There's no chicken." He feels – dizzy, light. He's hanging onto earth by a thread and if he falls upwards Whizzer wouldn't catch him.

"There was." Whizzer grits out from between his teeth. "I came here earlier to make some, and you weren't home, and then you never came home, so I drunk your wine and I forgot about the timer and the chicken burned, so I left."

Sometimes it seems like a miracle that Whizzer is even alive. "What – then why are you here right now?"

Whizzer shrugs. "The bar I was planning on visiting is currently a crime scene and my apartment is flooded."

Marvin shakes his head. He's drowning like a fish pulled out of a tank. He's choking on air. "Flooded?"

"Yes," Whizzer conforms curtly. "But just specific rooms. It'll be fine. Land-Lord promised to fix it, so…"

Marvin clears his throat. Whizzer seems cold – physically, frozen to the bone and without a will to fix it. Like Marvin's son, refusing to put on a coat. Refusing to go to sleep on a school night. The real question is, is Whizzer cursed? Is he a siren, or a wood nymph, or an angel that fell? Did they meet at the bottom, or did he pull Marvin downwards? Matters very little, at this point, but Marvin believes in placing blame. He believes in guilt. He believes in shame. (Last year, on Yom Kipur, he decided that they are all fasting to repent for their mistakes. He told his wife that he was sorry. He asked Jason if he had something to tell him. He got pissy from lack of food and water and any will to attend temple whatsoever. He left the house with a slamming of a door and found Whizzer and located some take out and a bottle of wine and had all three before that day was out. Coming home, later, he felt sorry, but it wasn't enough to last).

"Some guy at work threw things at me today," he confesses.

Whizzer's eyebrows are raised.

"I mean, just two specific things. So…" There's a shiver running down his spine, a hand running down his thigh. There's Whizzer, leaning in front of him, folded forward, head and elbows on Marvin's knees. It's uncomfortable, but Marvin suspects that's sort of the point.

"Well fuck," Whizzer says. "Is your job always that interesting? I'd listen more often."

"It wasn't interesting," Marvin bites out. He must be louder than he intended to be, because Whizzer pulls back – a roll of his shoulders, a roll of his eyes, and shifts away from him.

"You're right," Whizzer tells him coldly. "This is boring. Why are you even telling me this?"

"So I drove to see my son, afterwards, and he was –"

"A brat?"

"Vindictive." Marvin shoulders are shaking, though he's not sure why. It's over. It's fine. They are done here.

Whizzer actually laughs at that. "What, did he throw things at you too?"

"He threw his Chess Board at the wall," Marvin explains quietly. He feels as if he's operating in a dream. It's hard to move. So is speaking full sentences. So is winning – a game, or an argument, or a fist fight. He never wins in dreams, ever. "Then he outed me to my father, so." Isn't life a nightmare? Isn't this a nightmare? The way his hands are moving. The way he's clutching at his left wrist with his right hand so hard he must seem like a maniac, the way he twists and pulls so hard he thinks it might break.

Whizzer's mouth opens in – what, shock? Did Marvin raise a son that could shock Whizzer with his erratic, irresponsible behavior? "Holy shit." He says. A pause. "Is it bad that I almost wish I was him?"

" _Yes_."    

"Right! Right, sorry. I just always sort of wanted to out you. It was taken from me. But it's fine." He smiles at Marvin, like a crack on glass, a scratch on Marvin's favorite record, "Can't believe your son stood up for himself better than I did."

 "Excuse me, stood up for himself, are you – He was getting back at me."

Whizzer says nothing.

"His father left him so he was going to get my father to leave me, that's all there was to it, that's –" It's hard to breathe. If you're Marvin. If your Marvin's dad. If your Marvin's son. A line of men with weak lungs and long noses that don't live up to the hype, they can't run but they can add and subtract, they see everything behind their tired eyes and floppy hair and stiff jaw. When a fairy came and asked them if they wished to be a real boy, they said fuck you, and she left them, and now it's too late – Marvin will never be a real man.  

"Wait, so your father knows –"

"No, my father doesn't know! He's deaf and only ever speaks on the phone when my mother is not around to take it away from him, and if he did know no one would believe him, the point is that my son knows." The air cuts like a knife as Marvin swallows it. "My son… Soul from work…" Why does he bother with air, anyway? The question makes sense, at the specific moment in time, so he stops bothering.

"Soul from work who threw thing at you?" Whizzer clarifies, carefully.

"Two things. Yes. Just two things."

"Well." He can see Whizzer's throat works as he swallows. "How do you feel about that?"

When Jason was younger, he would look Marvin's way before providing a response to any word uttered to him. If Marvin smiled, he'd be nice. If Marvin rolled his eyes, he'd be mean. If Marvin was angry, upset, distressed, well – God help them all. Should he still be doing that? Should he take emotional cues from Marvin, if Marvin's queer? Isn't that dangerous? How does Marvin feel about that? "Excuse me?" He sputters. "Are you my shrink now? What the hell?"

"Okay, what do you want from me?" Whizzer says, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Look at me, I'm Marvin, and I spend my entire day talking and talking _and talking_ about myself and then lose it when people actually _ask me something about it_. I mean what the fuck do you want, you say you want me to care - " Who does Jason look up to, when Marvin's the one talking, since he's most definitely not looking to Trina. Is he looking at Marvin? At Whizzer? If one of them leaves, will the other leave too? "And then you don't show up when I cook dinner, you go and visit your wife instead. You didn't even call a divorce lawyer, did you? And you left your perfect wife only to lose your shit, I'm sorry you require the help of a Thirty-Three-year-old women to tie your shoes in the mornings, Marvin, but I'm not going to be the person who does this for you –"

In Marvin's mind, he's probably yelling. Right now, however, he's not making any sound. He's moving air, making noise the way a ceiling fan does, round and round and round and stop, and fall, his head between his hands, nails digging into his temples, and he can't catch a break from himself, he hoped that leaving Trina would do it, that she was the worst of him, or maybe the child was, but it's all there, it's all still there, and he's heaving and Whizzer is watching him and everyone knows, everyone that matters. He thought sending his mother off to a different state would help but she has spies, and she has a husband, and everyone knows. He's as exposed as a dartboard, he's drawn an X upon himself and said, go right ahead, he's the Court's Jester of Suburban New York City. He's fucking queer.

"Woah, Marvin, hey –" There's a hand on his shoulder, though he can barely feel it, there's a voice urgently calling his name near his ear. Marvin feels like he might be laughing, but he's not sure that's true. He might be saying Whizzer's name, but he's not sure that’s true either. He's so tired of this – these compromises with the universe, this parasite inside his lungs. He's laughing, definitely. He's laughing. "Marvin. Marvin, _cut it out_. Now." There are hands, resting on both sides of his face, and that's the wrong thing to do, isn't it? A person who needs a room to breathe should be given space, but Whizzer is useless taking care of people, Marvin new that going in. "Marvin, look at me." He sounds upset. "C'mon, Marv, is it something I did? Focus. Yell at me. Oh my God, you're crying –" He sounds the way Marvin had, being left alone with Jason for the first time. Fuck. _Fuck_.

"I'm not crying, Whizzer, move away from me –" his voice is strangled, and there are tears, staining his face, but Whizzer let his hands fall to Marvin's lap, so that's a win.

"Marvin," Whizzer says slowly. "What's going on?"

Marvin shakes his head. "Nothing." He thinks about Trina, crying, sobbing, wailing. How it lost all meaning, after a while. How, at Four, it made Jason cry alongside her, and there Marvin was, in public, with two sobbing messes, the world around him watching, assuming it was his fault. It wasn't all his fault. "Nothing is going on. You're going to leave a bruise on my thigh and I'm not even getting off on it but apart from that –" He forces himself to look at Whizzer, but can't see him clearly, the room is a blur and Whizzer was not in sickness or in health kind of guy. It's fine, though. Marvin isn't sick. Marvin's fine.

"Look," Whizzer tells him, hesitant, before once again pulling his hands away. Marvin misses him. "If you need me to stay the night, just say so." His voice is hard, the way it gets when they're having a real fight, not a one that's foreplay, but they're not even fighting. "Or I could call your wife and tell her you need her to softly hold your hand and stroke your hair."

Marvin flinches. "Why would you do that? I don't want to see my wife." His voice is embarrassingly high. "Whizzer – this is a panic attack, have you never seen one? I've been having them since I was Fourteen." It takes everything within him, but he regains his composure, he straightens in his sit, he faces Whizzer Brown. He smiles. "It's nothing to worry about. I mean, there's no need for a scene."

"I wasn't making a scene –" Whizzer starts. His voice is dull, his eyes are bright. "I'm not worried, stop being a dick, you're sitting here, groaning like it's a bad porn –"

Marvin looks at him. At his now ruined hairdo (men shouldn't even have hairdos), at everything his overly tight button-up leaves to the imagination and everything it does not. The way he always crosses whatever it is can be considered good taste by a single step. He wants to lean his head on Whizzer's chest and hide beneath his leather Jacket. He wants Whizzer's weight to pin him to the ground.

"Marvin, are you listening to me – what are you even thinking about?"

Marvin reaches out then, takes Whizzer's hand, entangles his fingers with Marvin's own. He has to clear his throat before he can speak again, before he sounds like himself. He's not sure it's working, even as he does it. "I'm sorry, Whizzer."

Whizzer says nothing, eyes narrowed.

"I –" he coughs. "I heard you, about dinner. Um." He runs a hand through his hair; he needs a haircut, but whizzer prefers it long. When they were younger, Trina's hair reached all the way to her waist. When she asked whether she should trim it, Marvin didn't care. He didn’t notice when she finally did. "What time was it? Dinner, I mean." He coughs again. Maybe he caught whatever it is Mendel has. "What time was it supposed to be?"

Whizzer doesn’t miss a beat. "Eight."

"Okay." Marvin says. "Okay, I heard you. From now on I will always be here at Eight. This will be fine, right?"

Whizzer's eyes are narrowed so tight they're practically closed. "Good for you, I'm not going to be here –"

"Don't be a child, Whizzer, I'm trying to fix things." Marvin berates him. "You win, okay? I have conceded the point."

Whizzer looks at him – strangely, carefully, the way his mother looked at him when Marvin had said: 'For sure, mom, take my money and leave'. The way Trina had looked at him – well, always. "I don't even live here, Marvin. I can't just commute here every day for a booty call, this isn't college."

Heroically, almost, Marvin stops himself from rolling his eyes. "How would you know?"

"Bite me."

"Sure, come here." When Whizzer doesn’t move so much as a muscle, he says, "Obviously you were going to stay here a while. What with your flooded apartment." He smiles, then, but not like he's pleased, like he's… like he's nice. "Can't we just try it out? I promise I'll make it home every time, Whizzer. I care about that. I promise."

The way Whizzer stares at him, like he can't figure him out. The way his hands twitch where they rest atop his jeans. They live in a world of social ethic. It's improper, to reach out to a person and say: 'please, love me'. Except this is how you get things, this is how you get people, and all things equal, Marvin would still like to be himself. Marvin would keep whatever it is he has.  

"How was it?" Whizzer asks. "Seeing her again?" his voice is dry as a bone.

"Who, Trina?" Marvin blinks at him. Throughout most of their relationship, Whizzer had bravely held on to the notion that Trina had nothing to do with him. It was funny, when he realized that she's always waiting for him, at the bottom line. That women have children and receive rings in return, and children are a moving force. Marvin would have said 'I told you so', but Marvin was just as screwed. "Fuck, Whizzer, I don't care about that. I wanted to see my son. I found out he stole half my office. I came back here." A beat. "Do you think you could like him?"

"Who, Jason?" Whizzer pulls closer to Marvin, lays his head on Marvin's knees. "I already like him."

Whizzer never bothers to lie about stuff like that. "Oh," Marvin says. "I didn't know."

"You didn't ask."

"Okay," he concedes. "Okay." He rests his hand on Whizzer head, tangles his fingers in Whizzer's hair. There is no purpose behind that. "That's great, so he could come over. I mean, this place isn't a cupboard, he could come over, and we could have dinner, and watch TV, and he could sleep in the other room." He nods. He could ask Trina for recipes. Or Cordelia, though he suspects she's insane, so it might be better to wait with that one. Marvin can still provide a home. He can still provide a home cooked meal. "How about tomorrow I'll drive you to your apartment and we'll pack up your stuff." He murmurs.

He can feel Whizzer rolling his eyes. "How about you call your divorce lawyer?"

Marvin smirks. "Deal."

Whizzer turns to look at him. His eyes are rimmed red, though he wasn't crying, for sure.

"You're not sleeping well."

"Whatever," Whizzer tells him sharply. He gets up, long limbs organizing themselves into a straight line. "Who does."

"See," Marvin insists, though he has a feeling he should have stopped sooner. "This is compromise. This can work."

"I need a drink," Whizzer tells him. "Do you need a drink?" He turns, starting a march into the kitchen, before changing course and finding Marvin once more. He leans down and presses their lips together, and Marvin can breathe again. He's not sure how Whizzer's done that, be he can. "Me living here," he says, lips millimeters away from Marvin's, "It changes nothing."

Marvin is the one leaning in, this time around. "Okay," he says, hand pulling at the collar of Whizzer's shirt, just for the hell of it. "Wanna watch something?"

"No," Whizzer tells him, but doesn't protest as Marvin turns the TV on, as he makes his way back into the kitchen. "Doesn't have two work suits in his closet yet but has a liquor cabinet, what a freak," he mumbles, just loud enough for Marvin to hear, and Marvin smiles, like he's pleased, not like he's nice; like he's happy, though that's only half-way true. Whizzer returns, then, pulls Marvin by the hand, lifts him up, then depositing him on the sofa, next to him, leaning into him, them and a bottle of wine and a stupid game show, Whizzer's hand trailing up Marvin's thigh.

"I want everything," he tells Whizzer, voice quiet. "I want it all."

"Well, that's megalomaniac."

"Isn't that what you want?" He is dead serious about this. Whizzer, that pulled Marvin by the neck all the way from the suburbs. Whizzer, who doesn't let go while sleeping with half the men in New York. Who loves Marvin without liking Marvin, who loves Marvin but is perfectly willing to live without him, who is holding Marvin by the neck, still.

"Whatever," is Whizzer's response. He wraps an arm around Marvin's waist, digs beneath Marvin's shirt until his fingers find skin.

And Marvin smiles, just like that, like there's nothing to it, like there's nothing to him. He survived the night, and they'll survive the year, and that's it for games. That's it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's... over. I'm sort of terrified about posting this. Thank you for reading, thank you for responding, just thank you <3

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr right [here!](http://briefly-be.tumblr.com/)


End file.
